


The Confession of Lucifer Holmes

by delfiend



Series: My Sherlock AU [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock (TV) RPF, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 48,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6490828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delfiend/pseuds/delfiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after the end of The Case of the Psychopath's Son, we return to the world of The Moriarty Boys to accompany Lucifer Holmes, the son of Daniel Adler-Holmes, alias Jay Moriarty. With both his father and his grandfather Sherlock having gone missing years ago, Lucifer has grown accustom to their absence in his dull life, though he still wonders about their mysterious disappearance. But life continues on, and Lucifer continues his less-than-thrilling job as forensic analyst at Scotland Yard, and organization that now dabbles in censoring the rumor of crime as much as they do the actual stopping and solving of crime. However, when Lucifer realizes the corruption of the Yard first-hand, he begins to ask questions where he's told to keep his mouth shut, triggering a series of events that would change his dull life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_In the dark room, a single light turned on, illuminating the table below, and the two men who sat opposite one another. One was young, not yet thirty, with dark curly hair and dead, tired eyes. The other had sandy brown hair, combed neatly to one side, greens eyes that seemed fake, a smile on his face that was disingenuous from its permanence._

_“Could you please state your full name for the record?”_

_“Lucifer. Lucifer Sherlock Scott Holmes.”_

_“And do you know why you’re here, Lucifer? What purpose your confession will serve?”_

_“I do.”_

_“Excellent! That makes this a whole lot easier, doesn’t it?”_

_Lucifer was silent._

_“Anyways, moving on. I’m gonna need you to tell us everything, Lucifer. Do you understand?”_

_Lucifer nodded._

_“Good! Now if you’d be so kind to start at the beginning.”_

_“The beginning?”_

_“Yes. Tell us all about who Lucifer is. What makes you, you.”_

_“Where to begin…”_

____________________________

Like I said, my name is Lucifer. I hate the name. It’s too original. It attracts all sorts of unwanted attention right from the get-go. I introduce myself, and suddenly the personal questions start flying. I rarely will ever tell people my real name. I’ve always been Luke to my friends and family, and Luke is a much less interesting name, so I go by Luke in most every social situation. I’m less interesting when I’m Luke. I prefer it that way.

I was born to an unstable couple who were living in Paris, France at the time, or at least close enough to it to give birth in a Paris hospital, as is evident by my birth certificate. My mother, I was told she hated me from the moment I was conceived, and when I was finally born, she wouldn’t have anything to do with me. My father did his best to raise me, but I ended up dumped in the lap of his closest friends. He always said I couldn’t live with him because his lifestyle was too dangerous for me. I always took him at his word, but how easy would it be for him to lie to me? For all I know, he could’ve been a postman. As a kid I used to imagine that my parents were super spies, that I never met my mother because she was off saving the world, and my dad could never be around because he had to help out. Everyone’s stories were just a cover to keep their identities secret. Wishful thinking, I know, but it kept me going. When I was nine, my dad left me a kitten for Christmas. It was the last contact he ever made with me. I consider it the last time I was actually happy.

I grew up in the care of a great many people, but the most prominent people in my life were Molly Hooper and my grandfather, Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock was a great man, and I know he cared for me. But he was always so busy, so caught up in his work. He disappeared from my life the same night my father did. All my family, my blood relatives, just up and left me to fend for myself. But I had Molly Hooper, the kindest, most patient, and hardest working person I have ever met. She raised me as her own, never held me to a higher standard than I could achieve. I still live with her. I don’t have to—I have a place of my own, a gift from my Uncle Mycroft—but she’s older now, and the last thing I wish upon her is loneliness. She scolds me about it, tells me I need to move out, be more social, do more outside of the home, but I know deep down she’s grateful for my company. Plus, she and Humphrey, my cat, they’re very close.

____________________________

_“Why don’t you tell us about your job?”_

____________________________

I work for Scotland Yard. Really, the job was handed to me on a silver platter. Personally, I was content to continue reeling in the degrees at the local University, but Molly and Uncle Mycroft, they wanted me to grow up. I didn’t need the job; my father and my Uncle James’ father both left a generous amount of money to my name. I could never work a day in my life and live out my days in mild luxury with the fortune I own. But still, I’m a forensic analyst, working under the authority of Detective Inspector Anderson. Alfred Anderson, that’s what everyone at work knows him by. I know him by Alfie; we grew up together. I wouldn’t call us mates, but I spent a lot of time in his house as a boy. His mother was very generous with her time and her home. Honestly, he can’t stand me. I can’t blame him. It’s just too easy to give him a hard time. He’s a real copper, very stern, by the book. I find it tragically hilarious.

I’m the sort of guy who’s on call, meaning I don’t have to show up at the Yard to be on duty. If something comes up and they need a forensics guy, they call me. More likely, however, they call Johnson or Saxon, though they rarely call in Smith over me. I’m the best of the best, but Alfie, he’ll call in the others instead of me just to get back at me for being a prick. But not Smith. Smith is so terrible, Alfie won’t even call him in to make me mad. But if there’s ever something really tricky, something impossible, Alfie doesn’t hesitate to call me onto the case.

____________________________

_“Tell me about the day you were assigned to the Denis Koval case. Start from the beginning.”_

____________________________

Let’s see… It was February. I woke up to overcast skies, a chill in the air that crept in the old walls of Molly’s apartment. I woke up on time, but I rolled over, pulled the covers up to my chin, and fell back asleep. I woke up again when Molly came into my room, flipping on the lights pulling open the curtains.

“Get up Lou!” she scolded. “At this rate you’ll surely be late for work!”

“I don’t _have_ to go to the office, Molly,” I groaned, burying my face in my pillow. “If they need me, they’ll call.”

“You know just as well as I that they’ll call in Liam Johnson instead! You know why?

I groaned.

“Because young Mr. Johnson goes into the office even when he’s not on call! His presence at Scotland Yard means he’ll much sooner be put on a case than you will lying in bed! Now get up, get dressed! I’ll have breakfast ready to take with you. You are _going_ into work, mister!”

Molly receded from my room, but not before yanking my covers right off my bed. It was so cold, I had no choice but to get up out of bed and put on a sweatshirt to keep from turning into a popsicle. By then, it was too late for me to get back in bed, so I went to the bathroom, brushed my hair, my teeth, and got dressed for the day—the typical wrinkled dress shirt, slacks, and loose tie. When I got downstairs and went to the kitchen, Molly had made me toast with peanut butter and a to-go cup of coffee. I tried to sit down, but she scolded me.

“If you wanted to sit and eat, you should have gotten up an hour ago! Go on, get to work! You’re already late!”

I heaved a sigh, holding my toast with my teeth as I shrugged into my overcoat, munching and sipping my coffee as I headed for the door, struggling to get my ratty old Converse on as Humphrey rubbed up against my legs, flicking his tail in my face as I bent down to tie my shoes. I gave him half my toast as I slipped out the door, walking down the street and biding my time.

While I was wandering around, pretending to be headed to work, I stopped in a local pastry shop, where a lovely old Ukrainian couple, Marina and Denis Koval, were slaving away restocking their display cases with decadent pastries fresh from the oven.

“Luke, _miy dorohyy_ ,” Marina beamed, coming around from behind the counter to squish my face and kiss my cheeks.

It’s impossible not to feel a fondness towards Marina. She’s such a small woman, tiny and plump from years of sneaking pastries, but hard working, hands always calloused, arms always strong when she embraced you. And she _always_ embraced you. Marina loved everyone in the community. She knew everyone by name, welcomed all the children in for a free treat. I never understood how her and Denis got by, being so charitable with their merchandise. Well, at least how they got along before me. As soon as I turned eighteen and took control of my inheritance, I began giving a generous chunk to the Kovals every month. Because of me, the two can continue to make pastries, continue to hand them out to the children and loyal customers and not have to worry a moment about financial security.

“Here,” Marina smiled, sneaking back to wrap up a little something for me. “Take a knyshi with you. You’re thin enough to get blown away by the next big gust of wind!”

I laughed, smiling warmly at the old woman and accepting her gift graciously. “ _Dyakuyu_ , Marina.” I took a bite of the jam-filled bun, able to taste the love that had been baked in as I headed for the door.

“Farewell, Mister Luke,” Denis said in his somber tone from where he worked behind the counter, giving me a nod.

“It was good seeing you, Mr. Koval,” I smiled. Despite the aloofness he always displayed, I knew just how kind and soft-hearted Denis Koval really was. He was a wonderful man, kind and dedicated; he just struggled to show it.

With my belly full of knyshi, I headed not to Scotland Yard, but instead to the local secondary school to see my cousin Lily. She’s not actually my cousin, but her dad and my dad were close enough to be brothers, so we consider each other family. As expected, I found Lily sitting with two of her friends outside of a door behind the school, smoking. I pulled my badge from inside my coat, flashing it.

“Police. I’m going to need you to-” I didn’t get to finish before Lily’s friends had sprinted away, fearing arrest.

Lily rolled her eyes, taking another drag. “Doesn’t that get old, loser?”

I shrugged. “Not really. Your friends are always so creepy.”

I sat down beside her, helping myself to one of the cigarettes sitting unlit in the grass. Lily didn’t talk to me. She rarely talked to anyone, so I was fine with it. Lily Watson is one of the most reserved geniuses I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. She hated people. She tolerated others because that what was expected of her. She gets me, even if she doesn’t care for my company. We used to be the closest of friends when she was little, but as soon as I got a job at Scotland Yard, are friendship was gone. It took her quite a few years for her to trust me again, and even so were weren’t nearly as close as we once were.

“So what’s the fix this week?” I asked conversationally.

“Heroin.”

“Dealer?”

“The guy by the rail yard. Cory.”

I pulled a face. “No, Cory’s stash is under scrutiny. It’d hit up Rick on the East side. His is real good, and he hasn’t the sense to up his prices because of it.”

Lily nodded, silently taking my advice. “Shouldn’t you be at work with your fat cop buddies?”

I snorted, taking a drag off my cigarette. “Stuffing our faces with donuts and sifting through security footage?”

A hint of a smile came to her face, hidden behind her cigarette.

I smiled back. “Yeah, that’s not my scene. I only deal with the gory stuff.”

“I wish you’d take me with you sometime.”

“I’ll sneak you in one of these days. I’ve just got to get you a coat and forge you a badge.”

“Well hurry up. My brain’s turning to mush sitting in school all day. Bunch of idiots, all of them.”

We both heard the footsteps coming through the grass, headed our way. Without a word, we put out our cigarettes, hid the rest of the pack, and were staring at the door when the person came around the building. It was the principal, looking to Lily in fury.

“Ms. Watson! This is the third time you’ve skipped one of your classes! That’s a detention, young lady!”

I turned around, as if surprised by his being there. “Ah, you must be the principal. I’m Deceive Inspector Anderson.” I pulled a different badge from my coat, an impressive forgery of Alfie Anderson’s badge. “I’m here on a credible tip that there was some drug use going on around here. Ms. Watson here is an informant for Scotland Yard. She’s part of a project to help keep drugs out of school.”

“I haven’t heard of this program, nor of Ms. Watson’s involvement!” The principal fumed.

I scoffed. “Well of _course_ you haven’t! It’s all very hush hush at this stage. If all goes well, I assure you our successes, as well as the program itself, will be made public. In the meantime, Ms. Watson’s identity and her involvement with us must be kept secret. If word were to get around that she was helping the cops catch druggies, why all our substance-sods would simply avoid her. And that wouldn’t solve any problems, now would it, sir?”

The principal stuttered, and I cut back in, knowing I had him. “I’m sorry to have pulled Ms. Watson from class, but she texted, said it was urgent, that she had information suggesting a _dealer_ would be in this area at this time. And I needed Ms. Watson to pretend to be an interested buyer in order to catch the fellow. _I_ couldn’t do it, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Lily shook her head.

“Well did you catch him?” The principal asked, flabbergasted.

I shook my head sadly. “Unfortunately, no. But we found some evidence that he was here. Don’t worry, sir. We’re sure to catch him soon. In the meantime, if you could excuse Ms. Watson’s absence from class…”

“Of course, of course!” The principal sputtered. “If I had known she was working with Scotland Yard-…”

“Shh!” I hissed harshly. “We don’t want half the school knowing!”

The principal nodded vigorously.

“A-Am I still in trouble, Principal Carmen..?” Lily asked with perfectly emulated timidity.

“Of course not, Ms. Watson!” He assured. “You just come to me if any of your teachers get you in trouble for being away and working with Detective Anderson. I’ll clear the matter right up.”

Lily smiled. “Oh, thank you, Principal Carmen! I promise I’ll be right back in class. I just have to finish giving my leads to the Detective.”

“Yes of course,” the principal stuttered, turning to head back into the school. “Carry on!”

I stood there motionless beside Lily until we heard the door to the school open and shut around the side of the building. I looked at her as she looked at me, and the two of us burst out laughing.

“Did you see his face?” She gasped through laughs.

“Oh my gosh! He was so dumbfounded!”

“That was almost too good!” She grinned.

“Hey, you’re welcome,” I smiled, putting an arm around her shoulders in something of a hug. “I better get going, before Alfie gets word that he was recently investigating drug abuse in secondary school. See you later Lily!”

“Bye loser! Don’t forget: I want to see your next crime scene!” She called after me with a smirk.


	2. Chapter 2

_“So you were spending time with your cousin.”_

_“Yes. But she’s not my actual cousin.”_

_“I gathered that. Please, go on. What happened next?”_

_“You don’t need to bring her in.”_

_“Please continue, Mr. Holmes.”_

_“Let’s see…. I left the school… and headed to the University of London…”_

____________________________

My cousin Johnny, Lily’s older brother, he goes there. It was his first year; he’s only eighteen. I do my best to try and get lunch with him whenever I have the time. Johnny’s studying psychology, on the pre-law track. He wants to be a lawyer, help people like his dad in cases with insanity pleas. He’s a great kid, sharp as they come, witty as hell. It takes a whole trainload of misfortunate to even begin to dampen his spirits. I always feel a little bit better after having a talk with him.

I got to the campus a little earlier than expected, so I waited on a bench near his class, browsing through police reports to see if anything interesting had gone on. There was nothing to take interest in. The police reports were always so dull, always so cookie cutter. They were monitored, after all, mediated by some high level people in Scotland Yard. “Don’t Cause Panic.” That’s the motto. Don’t say a word until the case is solved. It’s the doctrine that is hammered into all new recruits at the Yard. Censorship over Sensationalism, they always preach. I remember when Mr. Lestrade retired, grumbling about the new doctrines, the one that I now work under. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wonder what Scotland Yard used to be like, when I was too little to remember. When Mr. Lestrade was still Detective Inspector, and Uncle Mycroft was still the British Government.

____________________________

_“You’re digressing.”_

_“I am. Sorry.”_

____________________________

Johnny got out of his Social Psychology class, and he spotted me on the bench, smiling and joining up with me.

“Hey Luke,” he smiled.

“Hey,” I smiled back, putting my phone away. “How was class?”

“It was good,” he nodded, looking back to the building he came from. “It’s a good class. A little sizable, but the material is at least interesting. Want to grab lunch?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I answered as I got up from the bench. “Tell me about school. How’s it going?”

So the two of us grabbed some sandwiches at this quaint little corner restaurant. Johnny told me about his classes, but quickly changed the subject to what _I_ was doing in my line of work. I happily told him about some of the more gruesome scenes I had the job of analyzing, and some of the more mysterious of crimes.

“They _never_ sound that interesting on the news!” Johnny shook his head in wonder.

“They always downplay everything. Turn it all cut in dry. Act like there isn’t a single case Scotland Yard can’t solve.” I shrugged it off. “Part of the whole Enlightenment movement, I guess.”

“Grandpa John always complains about it, the Enlightenment,” Johnny mused. “Says it’s nothing more than censorship, and that it’s turning the public into mindless sheep.”

“He’s not wrong,” I nodded. “But what are you gonna do?”

Our conversation didn’t get much farther, as my phone buzzed inside my coat pocket. I retrieved it and glanced at the screen; it was a call from Detective Inspector Anderson. I answered.

“What’s the scoop, Alphonso?” I asked with a smirk, hoping Alfie would take the bait and become furious over the nickname.

“We need you on this case,” Alfred said, all seriousness. “I called Johnson on, but even he’s baffled on this one.”

“Where am I headed to?” I asked, becoming all business myself.

Alfred rattled off the address and hung up. I returned the phone to my pocket, pulling out my wallet to cover the cost of lunch.

“Is that a new case?” Johnny asked excitedly. “Did he give you any details?”

“No details,” I answered with a smile. “But it does sound like this one’s gonna make a great tale to tell at parties!”

“Good luck!” Johnny called after me as I headed for the door. I waved back at him in acknowledgement.

I hailed a cab and was at the address within a few minutes. As I got out of the cab, I sized up the place. It was a suburban home, fancy and sizable enough to be upper-middleclass, but nothing about it suggested anything wealthier. The property was fenced in by police tape, attracting all sorts of attention from neighbors and passer-byers. I groaned, knowing that the media was sure to show up before long; their news hounds were prowling most every street in London, hunting for even the slightest scrap of news for someone to embellish into a four-course story. Already dreading having to catch a cab amidst a sea of cameras and microphones and reporters foaming at the mouth, I pulled my coat up to my cheekbones to conceal my face from anyone who might be snapping pictures from the bushes and ducked into the house.

The scene that greeted me was one I was more than accustomed to. Others from Scotland Yard milled about in their personal protective jumpers, snapping pictures of footprints in the carpet, and the body around which DI Anderson and analyst Johnson stood. I went over to them, careful to avoid all areas marked as evidence.

“Holmes! There you are!” Anderson said as he spotted me.

“Detective,” I nodded to him as I joined in standing by the body, looking to Johnson. “Johnson. It’s good to see you.”

Johnson wouldn’t look at me, clearly mad that Anderson thought it necessary to call me in despite having already had Johnson on the scene. I resisted the urge to smirk.

“What seems to be the problem?” I asked quizzically, arms folded.

“Evidence, DNA Evidence,” Anderson shook his head. “There isn’t any.”

“Cause of death?”

“Poisoned.”

“Any sign of foul play?”

“Nothing. Not a hair on the poor man’s head awry.”

I began pacing the house, looking closely at the footprints in the rug. “Johnson, what’s the man’s shoe size?”

“Elevens.”

“Some of these prints are size eights at best.” I looked at some of the assistance standing around. “You! See if you can collect any dirt, mud, _any_ debris that’s in these smaller prints. Run it through the database, see if there’s anything unique enough to tell us where these prints had been.”

I jumped up, following the prints backwards, reaching the trail’s end at the backdoor, leaning in close. A spot on the wooden frame had been splintered.

“Crowbar.”

“Excuse me?” Anderson frowned.

“Whoever made those footprints broke in. Here, look: see this here? Evidence of the door being pried open. Search the house and all garbage within a two mile radius for a crowbar. Handle it with gloves, gentlemen! We need it for fingerprints!”

I jumped over evidence cards on my sprint back over to the body, in my element, flipping the man from his stomach onto his back.

“What are you doing!?” Johnson spat angrily. “You can’t mess with body! That’s evidence!”

“Poison, you said he was poisoned!” I came back at him. “How? How was the poison administered? There’s no sign of injection, no wounds to have slipped it into, no sign of a struggle for direct application.” I sat bolt upright. “Drugs! Drinks! Scour this place for any pharmaceuticals, gather them up along with all drinking cups! Our perp had to touch them to add the poison. I want those things dusted for prints and all glasses scoured for traces of saliva!”

If I recall correctly, it was one hell of a late night that night. I was stuck at the office, combing over pictures, conducting countless tests, trying to stitch fragmented fingerprints together into something we could put through the database. At some point I even went looking for the elusive crowbar on my own, finding it buried deep in a public dumpster. Wooden splinters jammed in the serrated edge of crowbar matched with the wood in the crime scene door. There was no awareness of time when I got going on a good case, determined to identify the culprit. I was slumped at the forensics’ desk, red eyes fixed on the loading bar of the computer screen as the progress from the finger print scan snailed its way towards fourteen percent. A hand fell on my shoulder, attracting my attention.

“Hey, go home Luke,” Alfie said in a voice that with thick with fatigue. “The results will be here in the morning.”

I turned back to the screen, joking tiredly. “You just want to give the credit to Johnson… I won’t let that happen…”

He laughed just a little. “Just stick a Post-It note to the screen saying ‘This is Holmes’ work.’ No one could steal the credit then.”

He gave my shoulder an urgent pat. “Come on. Your slow ass is keeping me too long.”

Sluggishly, I stood from the desk, stretching the stiffness from my limbs, snagging my coat from the hook on the back of the forensics’ door and following Alfred out of Scotland Yard.

“Goodnight, Luke,” he called as he turned into the parking lot, leaving me waiting street-side to hail a cab.

But the last thing I was thinking about was hailing a cab. A thought had occurred to me, with my mind suddenly refreshed by the chilly night air. The footprints. The footprints at the crime scene. The man was murdered via a toxin I had found in his prescription medicine. And yet the footprints had been fresh. There was no need for the culprit to be present for the murder. The poison was at least a few days old, not newly added to the pills. _Why were there footprints?_ _Why did the culprit walk through the house and leave footprints on the day of the murder?_

The honk of a car horn startled me out of my own skin. I whirled around, staring blankly into the headlights of Alfie’s car.

He stuck his head out the window. “You’re blocking the exit, air-head Holmes! Let’s go!”

I blinked several times, not really hearing him. My mind was still stuck on the enigma that was the footprints. Alfred heaved a sigh, gesturing to the car with his thumb.

“Come on Luke, get in. I’ll drive you home.”

Automatically, I walked around and climbed in the passenger seat in silence. Alfred began to drive, glancing my way as I stared out of the front window, expression still blank.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I answered calmly. “Thanks for the lift.”

“Yeah,” Alfie responded, giving me another curious glance before returning his attention to the road.

He dropped me off at Molly’s and drove off to his own apartment. I climbed the stairs up to the fifth floor, wandering down the hallway, fiddling with the tricky lock, heading inside and re-locking the door behind me. The apartment was mostly dark, except for a light in the kitchen, where Molly had left out a plate of dinner, some sort of pasta dish. I didn’t even feel hungry, so I just stared at the plate, not sure what to do to dispose of the evidence. The solution came wandering up to purr against my leg. While Humphrey made short work of my dinner, I sat at the kitchen table, hands folded beneath my chin, eyes staring at the wall. _Why the footprints? It didn’t make sense_. When Humphrey had finished, I rinsed the plate and left it in the sink, noting that cleaning it completely would be too suspicious. I moved like a ghost into my room, the thought still running through my head as I took a shower and got dressed into a pair of boxers and a plain grey cotton shirt. _Why the footprints?_ When I finally shut off the light and crawled into bed, I lay staring at the ceiling, kept awake by the plaguing misfit evidence.


	3. Chapter 3

The next morning, I couldn’t get to work fast enough. I hardly slept at all thinking about the incongruent evidence. I _needed_ the closure of a name, someone to throw into custody as the man responsible. If his identity could just be determined, all my fretting over the mismatched evidence would be put to rest. With my shoes only half tied, my coat pulled onto one arm, and my toast pinned between my teeth, I rushed out the door, mumbling around my breakfast to Molly that they’d have coffee at work.

I was too impatient to stand still and hail a cab. Instead, I partially walked to Scotland Yard while trying to hail every last cab that passed my way. I was about halfway there when I finally got a cab, which drove the rest of the distance. I hardly remember swiping into work. All I remember is the blind sprint up the stairs, being too impatient to wait for the elevator. I finally reached DI Anderson’s sector after ten flights of stairs, panting and light-headed but speeding still towards the forensics office, bursting through the door to the lab and scaring the living daylights out of an assistant working there.

“Are the results in?” I gasped, chest heaving as I leaned in the doorway. “The fingerprints: did we get a match?”

The young girl smiled. “Oh yes! We caught our guy! Some others headed out just a few minutes back to bring him in to custody.”

“Well?” I asked in exasperation. “Who was it?”

“Denis Koval, I believe,” she said, checking the computer screen to verify as my blood turned to ice in my veins. “Yeah, Koval. The guy who runs that little bakery on West Smithfield. Who would’ve thought it?”

I heard the words only faintly, as I was already out the door and storming to Alfred’s office. I burst through the door to find him finishing up a call, something he did promptly as he eyed me in my fury.

“Luke, what’s wrong?” He asked as he clicked the phone into its cradle.

“Denis Koval!? Are you serious!?” I was practically screaming, teeth clenched in absolute frustration. “He’s the nicest man I’ve ever met, Aflie. You _know_ him! He didn’t kill that man!!”

Alfred shrugged helplessly. “You’re the one that gathered the evidence against him! The fingerprints: his. The footprints: contained traces of _baking flour._ And we’ll know Mr. Koval’s shoe size very shortly. You can’t just deny the evidence doesn’t point directly to him!”

“No I can do one better than that,” I growled, piercing him with an icy glare. “I can present evidence that it would have been _impossible_ for Denis Koval to have been at the crime scene.”

Alfie scoffed. “And how exactly can you do that?”

“I was there!!” I snapped, temper flaring. “I was _at_ the Koval Bakery not but a few hours before you called me in! Johnson reported the time of death to have been early that morning, the exact time I was _with_ Denis Koval. I’ll _prove_ his innocence!! That’s a promise!”

I didn’t wait for Alfie to respond, knowing his next words were going to be an attempt to calm me down, bring me to see reason. I refused to calm down. I wouldn’t be calm until Denis Koval’s name was free of any and all suspicion. On my way out the Detective Inspector’s office, however, I managed to snag myself the keys to Alfie’s police car. I took the elevator back down to the ground floor, walking out the door to the parking lot and clipping a badge to my jacket. _Alfred Anderson. DI._ My picture had been swapped for Aflie’s. I figured it was going to take Detective Inspector status to get the ball rolling in Denis Koval’s favor.

I knew what I needed as I got into the car and revved the engine. Two pieces of evidence had already formed in my mind, and together they were sure to be enough to at least cause the doubt needed to prevent a “guilty without a doubt” sentence. If the jury wasn’t totally convinced, they couldn’t convict poor Mr. Koval. That was all I needed to do: present just enough evidence to make a few jurymen and woman unsure. The first piece was easy. I called a lower level policeman at a different branch of Scotland Yard than my own as I drove through town.

“Constable Barnes.”

“Yes, hi Mr. Barnes. This is Detective Inspector Anderson. I’m calling in a small favor.”

“Yes, anything for you, Detective!”

“The little bakery on West Smithfield. You know it? It’s my understanding that there’s a security camera that can see who’s entering and exiting the place. I’m going to need that footage. Just the stuff from yesterday, 3 AM to 8 PM.”

“Of course! I’ll have that sent over to your division.”

“You know what Barnes, I’m going to be out and about today. Mind if I just swing by and pick it up a little later?”

“Oh, yeah… yeah sure, Detective! It’ll be ready in about an hour, is that okay?”

“That’s just fine, Constable. Thank you very much.”

I clicked the line closed on my cell, pulling into the Secondary School parking lot. With my first line of defense on its way, I set my mind to securing my second piece of hard evidence. Pulling my coat collar up around my face, I snuck around back of the school and began rummaging through the trash. I needed the paper bag I had gotten my knyshi in from the bakery. Denis Koval had handled the bag; his fingerprints would be on it. Along with the security footage showing me entering the bakery and exiting with the bag, and maybe a little dating on any jam residue for even more conclusive evidence, I thought for sure it would be enough to at least unsettle the charges of murder.

Once I found the paper bag, I drove to retrieve the security footage from Constable Barnes. He handed it over, no questions asked. Clearly he had never met Alfie before, or he would have been at least a bit suspicious of me. Instead of returning to the Yard, I headed downtown to my apartment. I keep my own set of lab equipment there for when I need to perform some analysis without Johnson or Anderson sticking their nose in my business. I spent the entire day there, slowing piecing together the evidence I needed for a firm presentation of Denis Koval’s innocence. It all fell into place beautifully. The footage showed me visiting the bakery and leaving with the bag in my hand. I managed to get an intact fingerprint of Mr. Koval’s off the bag, and I dated the age of the jam residue on the inside based off the denaturing of the sugars in the substance.

I drove back to Scotland Yard as the workday drew to a close. Most everyone in our division had gone home when I swiped back in, going immediately to Alfred’s office, where he stood discussing what details to leak to the media from the Koval arrest with our media man. I smacked the manila folder containing all the evidence I had slaved over onto his desk. Alfred looked at it, looking to me irritably.

“What is this?” He asked, picking up the file.

“Proof.”

“Of what, Holmes?”

“Of Denis Koval’s innocence.”

Anderson sighed heavily, sitting in his chair as he thumbed through the file, eyes flitting over the evidence I had gathered. He shut the file, pitching the bridge of his nose, a sign of stress I was familiar with; it happened often when the two of us conversed.

“Look, Luke, we’ve known each other for more than two decades. You know me. You trust my judgement as Detective Inspector, don’t you?”

“Yeah…” I answered with a baffled frown, not seeing where he was going with the conversation.

He held out the file to me. “Take this and destroy it. I don’t want any of this evidence going public.”

“ _What!?_ ” I exclaimed in disbelief. “No!!”

“Luke, listen to me!” Anderson pleaded angrily. “We arrested Denis Koval. We have the evidence to incriminate him. The public will be put at ease-”

“But this proves he’s innocent!” I snapped, taking the folder from him and waving it in his face. “I _refuse_ to stand by and see him wrongfully punished!!”

“I didn’t want to do this, Luke,” Anderson growled. “But this isn’t _my_ choice. Indict Denis Koval, prevent any evidence from surfacing that might inhibit the indictment process: those are my _orders_. Straight from the Chief Inspector. And _his_ orders came directly from the Commissioner herself.”

“I don’t care-!!”

“Dammit, you _will_ stand down, Holmes!! That’s an _order_!”

“Make me!!”

Anderson was immediately on his feet, chair rolling away behind him, staring darkly.

“Don’t make me put you on leave, Luke,” he said, dangerously calm. “This is way above our heads. Just do what you’re told.”

I stared at him in disbelief, still not quite sure that what was happening was real. Why would someone want Denis Koval indicted? Furthermore, why would the _Commissioner_ want Denis Koval indicted? The order to detain evidence of Koval’s innocence came directly from her.

Anderson held out his hand. “Hand it over.”

I eyed him, seriously considering running out with the evidence. But what was I going to do then? All of Scotland Yard would be after me. I would be caught and detained, the evidence destroyed, and then what who would come to Denis Koval’s aid? I placed the file back into Anderson’s hand. He turned and shoved it all through his paper shredder. I watched as all my tedious work, Denis Koval’s only hope, was turned into useless confetti.

“Go home,” Anderson said quietly, exhausted. I could tell the directive was weighing as heavily on his conscious as it was on mine. “Take tomorrow off.”

 He looked about to say something, something to console me, to make me feel less awful about condemning a man. But there was nothing he _could_ say, so he just dismissed me with a wave, slumping back into his seat and picking his conversation with the media representative back up. Alfie was lucky the man worked for Scotland Yard and not for a news outlet, or our argument would have made headlines. I left the office, heading numbly down the elevator, still numb as I swiped out of work and stood by the street. In my mind, I knew I had to hail a cab, but I made no motion to do so. A seed of doubt had been sewn, taking everything I thought I knew about Scotland Yard and tossing it sky-high. If evidence proving the innocence of a man like Denis Koval was withheld, there were no longer any boundaries in my mind that I was sure Scotland Yard wouldn’t cross.

____________________________

_“And did you listen to your superiors, Lucifer?”_

_“You know I didn’t.”_

_“I just had to hear you say it. Protocol. It sounds to me you were at a real crossroads at this time. Tell me: at what point did you decide to go against your order to stand down?”_

_“It was my day off. It was a Saturday….”_

____________________________

Johnny, Lily and I have a tradition that we keep on Saturdays. The two of them grab lunch for the three of us, and we meet up at my apartment downtown. We eat lunch with a view and I help them out with any homework they have. Between the three of us, we have the combined attention span needed to get through all their busywork. I was sulking about my apartment, not wanting Molly to know I was given the day off from work, when the two of them showed up with Chinese takeout. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. I kept pacing past my kitchen table, where copies of the evidence Alfie had shredded sat staring me in the face, my guilt like a parasite growing fat from their presence.

Johnny and Lily rang the bell to be buzzed in, and I did so without much thought. I ate with them in silence, I didn’t say much when they spoke to me. I was barely any help on their homework. I remember Johnny set his work aside, looking at me scrutinizingly.

“Alright, that’s quite enough,” he sighed. “What’s wrong, Luke?”

“Yeah, what the hell?” Lily added bitterly.

And so I told them. I told them about the Denis Koval case. I told them about how _I_ was the one who gathered the evidence against him, that _I_ was responsible for the fact that he would be thrown in jail for a murder I was sure he didn’t commit. I showed them the evidence I had gathered to clear his name, told them about what had transpired between Alfie and I, how the Commissioner herself had called for all evidence of Denis Koval’s innocence be detained and destroyed.

“Holy shit…” breathed Johnny in disbelief.

“That’s fucked up,” Lily growled.

“Yeah, I know…” I sighed, pressing both my palms into my eyes to try and relieve my pounding headache. “I just-… what am I supposed to do? The Commissioner is in charge of the entirety of Scotland Yard.”

“But poor Mr. Koval!” Johnny protested. “He hasn’t ever even raised his voice at the rowdy school children who come into the bakery and loiter, let alone _murder_ someone!”

“Come on, loser, this is an easy one,” Lily snorted contemptuously. “Here’s the evidence that proves Mr. Koval is innocent. So prove him innocent. It’s that simple.”

Lily was right, after all. It _was_ that simply. Even if Scotland Yard refused the evidence, the media would surely make a big deal out of it, or even a slip of the files into Denis Koval’s lawyer’s briefcase would do the job. The bottom line was I couldn’t stand by and watch the patient, kind, elderly Denis Koval get locked away when his saving grace sat on my kitchen table.

____________________________

_“So you leaked the evidence.”_

_“I leaked the evidence. Anonymously, of course. That’s the thing about the media: they report something, be it truthful or otherwise, and it starts a mass swarm of attention to the subject. I merely had to suggest there was evidence telling of Mr. Koval’s innocence, and every news outlet in London was mobbing Scotland Yard, demanding answers.”_

_“And what did you hope to achieve by causing this?”_

_“Pressure. Pressure on the Commissioner to revoke her order to withhold the evidence. And time. I wanted to buy Denis Koval more time before he was put on trial. I figured no judge would proceed with the hearing with the rumor circulating that evidence was being withheld.”_

_“That’s enough of that. Now, tell me about your first encounter with the man known as Phineas Rutherford Sinclair.”_

____________________________

It was that Sunday, the day after I sent the media into a frenzy over the Denis Koval case. I got a call from the Yard. A woman was on the other line.

“Mr. Holmes? I just got word that a forensics analyst is needed at a crime scene. Do you happen to be available?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting in the kitchen of Molly’s apartment, still in my pajamas. “Where’s the location?”

She rattled off an address, which I assured her I had written down. With a cheery _Thank you!_ she hung up. I stifled a yawn as I made my way back up to my bedroom to change, not knowing for which DI I was reporting to and not wanting to risk showing up in my pajamas to find out it was _not_ Alfie. While he was used to me showing up to crime scenes having just rolled out of bed—despite how much he despised me for doing so, there was no denying he was accustomed to it by now—other Detective Inspectors were not. It took me less than five minutes to throw on a suit and tie, ruffle my hair into decency, feed my toast to Humphrey, slip on my Converse, and be headed out the door. I hailed a cab, flashing my badge—the real one—and giving him the address I had to be at. Usually, I never pull the cop card with cabbies; I usually am happy to pay them, considering what a difficult line of work they belong to and the indecency of their average income. But as it were, I had left my wallet in my other set of work pants. So a free cab-ride it was.

The address belonged to an abandoned warehouse, which baffled me for all of a second before it dawned on me what a perfect spot for a murder it made.

“Thanks for the lift, mate,” I told the cabbie as I got out. “Hey, later tonight head to the pub on the corner of William IV’s and Saint Martin’s and tell them DI Anderson sent you. They’ll give you a free meal on the house, and the tap will be discounted.”

“Hey, thanks!” The cabbie chimed, in a much better mood after the thought of losing money.

I waved him off and he tipped his cap to me, then I turned and headed into the warehouse. The first thing that tipped me off was a disturbing lack of police tape anywhere. Not on the premise, not on the door… you have to understand, the Yard is overzealous with their police tape. I entered the warehouse, and it was eerily silent. I walked inside a few paces, looking around for any sign of police presence, finding none.

“Hello?” I called out, my voice echoing off the expansive brick walls as I walked farther into the warehouse.

“Hello Lucifer,” a voice came cheerily.

I turned the corner, spotting a single well-dressed man standing among the emptiness of the warehouse. Blonde hair, dead blue eyes, easy smirk. I stared at him, trying to deduce who he could possibly be.

“I’m so glad we finally get to meet face to face.” He smiled, a gesture that did nothing to warm the rest of his cold demeanor.

“May I ask who you are…?” I said politely in my confusion.

“I thought you’d know,” he said, sounding injured. “Since you rallied the media against me. Or rather, _tried_ to.”

It wasn’t clicking. I stared at him blankly, causing him to smile just a tad bit more.

“I’m the man who gave the order. You know, the one you directly disobeyed?”

“The order…” I blinked. “That came from the Commissioner…”

“And she got the order from me.”

“I’m sorry, but who the hell gives orders to the Commissioner of Scotland Yard?”

“I do,” he said as if the fact were plain as day.

“Then who the hell are you?”

“How rude of me! I haven’t properly introduced myself,” his brow furrowed with mocking sincerity before he smiled charmingly. “My name is Phineas. Phineas Rutherford Sinclair. And I _am_ the British Government.”


	4. Chapter 4

I had a lot to learn about Phineas Sinclair at that point. When I first met him, I couldn’t take him seriously. I always thought he was joking when said anything that I didn’t already know. I thought he was trying to be impressive when really he was just being his smug self. I’ll admit I had no idea what to think of him when I first met him that day in the warehouse. All I knew was that Phineas Sinclair was an enigma, a puzzle, and I was eager to figure him out. Little did I know there would be no understanding Phineas Sinclair; figuring him out was simply an impossibility I had yet to recognize as such.

“What do you want?” I said dryly. “You brought me here for a reason, didn’t you?”

“To introduce myself, yes,” he smiled. “But that’s been done. We’re finished here.”

“No we are not!” I snapped impatiently. “You made the order to indict Denis Koval! You’re the one that’s preventing him from being proven innocent!”

“Yes, I am,” he said, sounding tired, impatient. “But I won’t tell you why.” He paused a moment to watch my anger boil over, then smirked. “At least, not here. Not now.” He tilted his head. “Do you like coffee, Lucifer?” He grinned once more. “Just kidding, I know you like coffee. Meet me at the little coffee shop across the street from the Koval Bakery. Tomorrow, 8 AM sharp. I know that’s a bit early for your taste, but I’m afraid my schedule simply doesn’t allow for us to meet at any other time. Consider it a date.”

He turned and walked back further into the warehouse where a light clicked on, illuminating a dark car sat waiting where it had been concealed in shadows.

“See you later, alligator,” he chimed as he waved a hand in goodbye.

A man exited the driver side of the car and opened the door to the back seat, allowing Phineas to climb inside before shutting the door and returning to the driver’s seat, starting the car. A giant industrial door rattled open, and the car drove away, the door shutting behind it.

I’m not sure how long I just stood there. A man just told me he had Scotland Yard in his pocket, nestled right beside his pocket hankie. The Commissioner answered to _him_. I began to wonder numbly just how many other officials got their orders from this guy. Just thinking about it made me feel sick. I didn’t want to leave the warehouse, not wanting to step outside into a world knowing just how corrupt everything was. It took a while, but I remember I convinced myself Phineas Sinclair couldn’t be in charge of _everything_ , and so I went home with the hopes that I could find someone somewhere to stand up to him.

____________________________

_“Did you take him up on his offer of a meeting?”_

_“Yeah, of course.”_

_“Elaborate. Tell me what was said between the two of you.”_

____________________________

I almost didn’t recognize him. He sat in corner, no longer in a fancy suit but wearing an old sweatshirt and tattered jeans, glasses, and his hair a bit wild atop his head without a pound of product keeping it in check. I don’t think I wouldn’t have known it was him if he didn’t spot me in the doorway and raise his cup of coffee to me in greeting. I recognized his smug smile in an instant, my stomach twisting in knots as I joined him at the small table.

He pushed a cup of coffee my way. “This one’s yours.”

I began to decline, but he cut me off. “Three sugars, an expresso shot, and just a tad bit of Kahlua’s. Don’t worry, I know how you like it.”

Reluctantly, I took a hold of the coffee, giving it a sip. He was right; it _was_ just how I liked it, maybe even better than the stuff I whipped together. That made me unimaginably angry.

“What do you want?” I growled, keeping my voice low.

“A moment to myself every once and a while,” he sighed nostalgically, eyes trailing from the window to look at me, a smiling coming to his face at the sight of just how furious I was. “You’re the one that wanted to talk to me. If you don’t want to be here, _I_ don’t have to be here-…”

“Denis Koval,” I said, managing to pull myself together. “Why him? Why indict a man like Denis Koval?”

“Oh I did more than indict him, Lucifer,” Phineas said matter-of-factly, sipping his coffee and adjusting his thick-framed glasses, folding his arms on the table and leaning forward. “I incriminated him.”

“What-!?”

“Lucifer, as much as I appreciate the sound of your voice, I think this would be easier on the both of us if you just shut up for a minute or two and let me speak.”

Rage boiling and fists clenching, I managed to clench my teeth shut and let him go about telling me what I wanted to know.

“Did you even notice _who_ was dead in that suburban home? I’ll tell you. He was the Britain’s Ukrainian ambassador. And we needed him gone. So we killed him. Of course, as the system operates, you funny men at Scotland Yard need to pin the death on someone. Someone had to take the fall, because my people certain weren’t about to. Ukrainian ambassador, made sense that a man born and raised Ukrainian would kill him in a spontaneous and thoughtless act of nationalism. Denis Koval just happened to fit the criteria.

“But understand, Lucifer, _our_ actions were neither spontaneous nor thoughtless. The hit had been planned for months. Very gradually, we gathered enough fingerprints and evidence to be used against Koval, one inconspicuous purchase at a time. Our people recreated the fingerprints on the crowbar, the poison-laced medication, and a few more spots just in case it occurred to you to look.” The smirk showed back up. “The crowbar was my own personal touch. I figured you’d be the only one to notice the damaged wood, be devoted enough to go dumpster diving for the tool responsible.

“Anyways, everyone was happy. A murder was solved. A murderer caught. A public reassured once more that there wasn’t a damn thing to be worried about. Do you know how many years it took for me to build the system we have today? Not, long, I assure you. Do you know why? Because it’s what the world needs. The illusion of transparency. A concise police force, slapping criminals in cuffs hours after a crime was committed. The media tells what needs to be heard, whether that be the full truth, part of the truth, or no truth at all. This gives the public peace of mind knowing that their government can handle all their domestic problems. And peace of mind opens up opportunities for peace abroad. World peace, as it’s often romantically dubbed.”

I couldn’t stay silent any longer. “You can’t expect me to believe that _you_ corrupting both the media and Scotland Yard could have any positive affect—hell, any affect at all—on a global stage!”

Phineas smirked knowingly, sipping his coffee. “And that’s what separates you from me, Lucifer. Ignorance.”

I was seething, but I was starting to understand how I needed to deal with this puzzle of a man. “Please, enlighten me. That’s what you dubbed this time, your reign in office, isn’t it? The Enlightenment Movement?”

“We’re shining a flood light into the deepest darkest corners of our beautiful country to assure the people that no monsters lurk there. Knowing is the key to not worrying.”

How many times have I heard that saying, closing out meetings at the Yard, italicized at the end of emails, the first page of our conduct manuals? _Knowing is the key to not worrying._ Before, it seemed noble, an ultimately unachievable goal, but one to work towards diligently. Now? It sounded to me like the light was shone into the darkest corners to keep people’s attention from the real monsters, taking center stage in their government.

“You, like everyone else, live in your little worlds full of little people and little problems to solve. Your tiny points of view prevent you from seeing the bigger picture. But, if you’re able to acknowledge the fact that I pull the puppet strings of England, there’s hope for you yet, Lucy.”

“Don’t call me Lu-”

“Hush. Don’t speak, remember?” A smile flashed onto his serious expression. I waited for him to say something, bring me to see the ‘bigger picture,’ but he sat in silence, smiling away.

Then, he sat back in his chair, picking up his coffee with one hand as he checked his watch.

“Well I enjoyed this chat. I really did. Sorry to cut it short, but I’m afraid I have an important press conference to smile at. Trust me, Lucifer, if it wasn’t important, I’d miss it just for you, but I’m afraid it _is_ important.”

He began for the door, pausing after only a few steps, standing beside me.

“If you can find me another suitable person to take the blame for the Ukrainian ambassador’s murder, you have my word that Koval will be freed and the records of him ever being detained will be wiped from both Scotland Yard’s records and from all media outlets. You have exactly one week before the trail. Chop chop.”

And on that note, he was gone, swept off in a dark car that pulled up to the curb the moment he stepped outside. A moment later, it was gone, whisking Phineas Sinclair away to his important press conference and his god-like existence.

And I remember I just sat there, staring at my coffee, watching the steam roll of it. Slowly, carefully, I was processing the information I’d received from Phineas. Denis Koval could still be saved, but another man had to take the fall. And _I_ got to choose who. As wrong as it might sound, I found this to be more than fair. Phineas made it very clear he needed someone to take the fall for one of his own. Denis Koval was his choice; he was giving me the opportunity to modify that choice for him. I left that café with a single goal occupying my whole mind. Find a guy, forage the evidence, free Koval.

For me, that’s where I thought it would end, between Phineas and me. I thought I would find him a new guy, he’d let Denis Koval go free, we’d shake hands and part ways. That would be that. I had no idea what I was about to get myself into by taking Phineas up on his offer.

____________________________

_“If you had the chance to redo that day knowing what you know now, do you think you would have done anything differently?”_

_“Honestly? Probably punch Phineas in his smug little face. Then I’d be tempted to kiss the damn guy, but I’m sure I’d settle for an awkward hug or handshake. But as to taking him up on his offer? No, I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”_

_“That’s quite a brash statement, considering where that decision ultimately landed you.” He gesture to the poorly lit room._

_Lucifer couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah. Fuck off.”_


	5. Chapter 5

As it were, I had the unfortunate circumstance of being extremely busy that next week, the week I had to find someone to replace Denis Koval in custody. Alfie called me in on a case at a dreadfully early hour, and near 4 AM I was on my way to the scene. If it had been something simple, something more to Johnson or Saxon’s level, I could have worked everything out before the day was done and had plenty of time to comb the Scotland Yard Database of suspicious characters, find someone for Phineas. But, as it were, the case was far from simple.

The man in the alley had been shot dead and had his face mutilated, and then the entire corpse had been burned to a crisp. I worked on the body alone, as Aflie and his team couldn’t bear the smell. Charred flesh never really bothered me; I never really felt sickened by the stench of death or the sight of a murder. There was almost no evidence to go by. After a tedious amount of cutting, I managed to find some a spot where the dura layer of skin hadn’t been completely destroyed, and I extracted a sample for DNA testing. With the evidence gathered to identify the victim, my next task was to gather evidence to identify the killer. It was hard to read a book whose pages had been burned to a crisp; it’s the same with bodies. I spent a full three hours crouched by the body, slaving away trying to extract any bullets that might still be lodged in the body. When I finally came up with one, Alfie made the call to end our investigation at the crime scene. The evidence and I returned to Scotland Yard.

The rest of my day was filled with DNA extraction and ballistics tests. When I finally figured out what sort of firearm the bullet had come from, I spent my night chatting with our informants to figure out the whereabouts of such a gun. It should’ve been a simple matter. But instead, it turned into a goose chase. A guy who knows a guy who knew a guy saw a man with that gun. And even if it had just been the one case, searching for the murder weapon, I would have had enough time to find someone new for Phineas to indict. But my luck didn’t stop there.

I was assigned three more cases before the week was out, an unprecedented amount; Alfie was clearly trying to either punish me for my disobedience on the Koval case or apologize in some weird way by giving me work to do. Whatever his reasons, I was kept thoroughly busy all week long, my hours both day and night saturated in investigation. Sunday finally rolled around. I had closed out every last case I was assigned to. Four new criminals sat in our cells. The guys in Alfie’s division bought donuts in my honor, and all of them gave me fake smiles and insincere congratulations. I milled about the office for fifteen minutes amongst all the hullaballoo, trying to discretely browse the criminal database. There was no point. I was shutting the database down every thirty seconds as one after the other my fellow employees felt the need to come by my desk and tell me I had done a great job. Fed up, I sulked to Alfie’s office and requested the rest of the day off. He enthusiastically granted my request through a mouthful of chocolate glazed donut, and I was out of the curb before another person could chime _Great job, Luke!_

I didn’t want to wait for a cabbie. I wanted to walk, clear my head, reassign my focus. I hardly noticed as someone began walking beside me until they spoke.

“Your times up, Lucifer,” Phineas said cheerily. “Do you have me my new criminal?”

Again, I hardly knew it was him aside from his distinct, condescending tone. This time, he wore a black suit with a black tie and a black overcoat, collar turned up, dark aviators on his face, hair more groomed than at the coffee shop but nowhere near as it was in the warehouse.

“My time can’t be up,” I snapped. “We met on Monday. You said one week. It’s only Sunday.”

“You and I both know you’re not going to find someone, plant the evidence needed to incriminate them, _and_ convince the Yard to look into the matter all before tomorrow.”

“Well I’m going to try!”

“Lucifer please,” Phineas sighed impatiently. “Just give up. Denis Koval goes to jail, so what?”

“Oh, so going to jail is no big deal?” I challenged. “Then why doesn’t your hitman take the fall, huh?! I don’t see what’s so wrong with that! You could just bail him out, or pull on your little Scotland Yard puppet strings and have him released. Why don’t you just do that!?”

“You speak of matters that are _far_ beyond your comprehension,” Phineas said mournfully with a shake of his head. “The man you want indicted? He doesn’t exist. Not according to anyone’s census. And besides, it’d be going against my orders, anyway.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I scoffed. “He doesn’t exist? What? And who the hell gives _you_ orders?”

I looked at him, realizing that very suddenly everything about him had changed. His easy posture had turned tense, when he spoke to me his voice was low and serious, no longer condescending, his eyes looking not at me but somewhere across the street.

“This conversation is over. You’ll have to find the answers for yourself.” He took a hold of my hand, stopping to shake it purposefully before tucking his hands into his coat pockets and veering away, turning the corner when I paused at the crosswalk.

I was confused, looking across the street to try and spot what had put Phineas on edge. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, just people, walking, standing, talking. Still, if Phineas, the cockiest man I had ever met, found reason to be wary from what he saw across the street, I would be wary too. So I tucked my hands into my pockets, crossing the street as the sign changed, hiding the business card Phineas had slipped into my hand.

I didn’t dare take it out and look at it until I had gotten home and drawn the curtains in my bedroom. I don’t know why I was being so damn cautious, but just seeing Phineas become so reserved in an instant, it had me somewhat one edge, just a bit paranoid. I looked at the card, which was shiny black with silver reflective lettering: _Phineas Rutherford Sinclair. Diogenes Club. Room 114._

I recognized the room number. I had visited the Diogenes Club only once when I was young, to visit with Mycroft after the news of my Uncle Tin’s death had reached my Uncle James, and later me. The Diogenes Club was a mysterious place, full of elderly citizens of extreme class, none of whom talked with one another. Only in Uncle Mycroft’s private office was I allowed to talk. His office has been in Room 114.

____________________________

_“Let me guess. You went to the Diogenes Club, to Room 114.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Looking for Phineas?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“It sounds to me like the two of you were turning into quite the couple.”_

_Lucifer chuckled a little. “It does, doesn’t it? Funny… at the time it felt more like a fox chase, a wild hunt for answers more than anything else.”_

_“So, are the two of you happy together_ now _?”_

_Lucifer motioned to the dimly lit room, his voice a menacing growl. “No.”_

_There was a tense pause. “Please. Continue.”_

____________________________

I gave it a few days before I made any move to find Phineas. If there was someone or something watching him, making him reluctant to be seen with me, I wanted to make sure they had thoroughly lost interest before I acted. I have to say it was difficult to wait, as work suddenly turned into a deserted wasteland of crimeless-ness and I had nothing better to do than lay around reading with Humphrey and stewing over Phineas’ mysterious last words. How could a man not exist? And who and the world order around Phineas Sinclair, _the_ British Government?

I dressed nicely, in my cleanest suit and tie; I even gave my shoes a little wash to rid them of the stench of rotting corpse and bleach. I’m sure they reeked to high heavens; Molly and I were both desensitized to the smell and never could tell just how badly they stunk. Having been to the Diogenes Club once before, I was more than aware of the odd customs the decaying men and women kept, and I prepped myself to utter sophistication for a full hour before I left the apartment. Molly asked where I was going. I told her I decided to spend the day touring the museums. She asked if I’d be home for lunch. I told her no, and not to expect me for dinner either. The drive was not short enough. No one questioned my being at the Club; I looked the part, all dressed to the t and serious as hell. I had to walk about at a leisurely pace, not wanting to draw attention to myself. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally found Room 114. It was all I could do to keep from busting the door down in my anticipation. Instead, I rapped softly on the oaken door and let myself inside.

Just as I expected, I entered the room to find Phineas sitting in the spot where my Uncle Mycroft had been all those years ago. It seemed rather surreal, really. Phineas, so young, so charismatic, so charming and handsome, nestling himself amongst the company of men twice—sometimes three times—his age. And yet all at once, seeing him working there, at home in his expensive suit, comfortable with his hair styled to the max, cold eyes taking in all with calculating curiosity; Phineas definitely belonged, sitting in his seat of power. He looked up a moment or two after I entered, offering me a causal smile of characteristic smugness.

“Lucifer. What a pleasant surprise. Please, sit.” He motioned to the two plush armchairs that sat several feet away from his expansive desk.

I sat down, opening my mouth to speak, to get my answers, very quickly realizing that I had become speechless. Phineas hardly seemed to notice, but there was a slight change to his smile, a satisfaction that hinted to the fact that he was pleased to see me so thrown for a loop.

“Looking for me to elaborate, are you?” He said, cutting to my chase before I had the chance to myself. “Well you’re in luck. I happen to be in the elaborating mood.” His smile turned to a frown of disingenuous seriousness. “Remind me where I left you off again…”

“Your hitman won’t—or can’t, really—take the fall for the murder because he supposedly doesn’t exist. Oh, and you can’t do anything because you have orders to follow.”

“Wow, I was rather vague, wasn’t I?” He shook his head. “I apologize. I tend to be vague on Sundays. It just happens. I don’t know why.”

“You got spooked by something. That’s why you didn’t continue.”

“You have to understand something very abstract, Lucifer,” Phineas said, ignoring my previous comment. “World peace. Everyone wants it. Everyone claims to be working towards it. But that means everyone’s chasing after unicorns and leprechauns. World Peace is a myth; unattainable, achievable, impossible. What _is_ a realist goal that _can_ be reached is World Collaboration. Countries around the world putting self-interest aside for the benefit of all. Making sacrifices on their countries’ behalf to boost another, knowing that one day _they_ will be the ones to get a boost at another country’s expense. But I know what you’re thinking, Lucifer. You know just as well as I that countries will _never_ put their interests aside on another country’s behalf. Not if left on their own to squabble like they do in N.A.T.O. and the U.N.

“But imagine this, Lucifer: imagine that the countries _weren’t_ left to make their own decisions. What if they were _ordered_ how to act? What if someone, or a group of someones, separate from allegiance, looking only to the greater benefit of all, _told_ countries what decisions to make; when to stand down, when to make the damaging trade, when and where to send money and aid. And what if they went further than just ordering what should be done? What if they could be the ones to _make_ the decisions, as well as decide on them? What if, instead of telling Britain they should make the trade to boost China’s economy at the expense of the British economy, they could _make_ the decision take place?”

“You don’t mean-…”

“You’re catching on. Good. It took you a while. And _yes_ , I do mean what you’re thinking.”

“It’s _you_.”

“The people who know about them, about my people, call them the Clandestine Syndicate, or CS for short. A select group of massively intelligent individuals, withdrawn from individual country, loyal only to the CS, believing in their purpose and their mission. It started as just a bunch of radicals, people who were tired of greedy governments and politicians letting their countries grow fat and prosperous while others suffered. People who were tired of alliances falling apart like tissue paper under the slightest of pressures because everyone was only looking out for themselves. The radicals began to preform acts of espionage, growing close with high officials, collecting secrets, sharing them with the people and politicians who needed to hear them the most. It caused chaos, but when the dust settled changes had been made, changes for the better. The radicals, they knew that they had to continue their work. Make it bigger, better, kept under control. But they were wanted men and women, so they dropped off the map. According to official documentation, the people simply disappeared. Records of them were incinerated.

“Over the years, these radicals recruited others to their cause. As they expanded in number, they evolved in how they operated. When many of those recruited were exposed as disloyal to the cause, the radicals moved instead to recruiting children. Orphans, mostly. Kids could be taught, raised to be loyal only to the CS, never knowing loyalty to a country or a nation. As the children grew into adults, the CS grew strong on their unshakable loyalty and diligent work. But their efficiency was low. Secrets could be gathered, information leaked to those who needed to hear it and act accordingly, but the CS had no way of ensuring action was taken. Too many times those provided with valuable secrets chose to do nothing instead of risk war or economic collapse. So once again, the CS evolved.

“They began to become more selective with the children they brought in. Only the ones who displayed a detachment from emotions, who were far superior in intelligence and emotional control than others their age; they were the ones taken in, raised under the code and guidance of the CS. They were planted in homes around the world, under the care of adult members of the utmost loyalty, raised in the culture of the country in which they lived but remaining loyal only to the CS. When these children grew to the right age, they were placed in politics, sent on the road to becoming leaders and powerful officials. With their own people in the positions to take action, the CS managed to have an exponential effect on the balance in the world. But their efficiency was not perfect. Despite their teachings as kids, some of the CS members in positions of great power defected, be it to the country over which they ruled, or to other groups similar to the CS, but with differing end-games. Changes had to be made once more.

“And so they began to raise children to take on varying roles in the world. Still they raised up high level politicians, but now they also raised assassins, poised to do away with high-stakes members should their loyalties come into question, and to be close with powerful politicians unaligned with the CS, should the moment arise that they hinder the CS’s agenda. They raised celebrities, who tamper with the public opinion from their thrones of idolism. There are dozens of roles now that children might be assigned to. Some are applicable only to a select few countries. This was the last great adjustment to the system that the leaders of the CS ever made. Up until now, at least.

“I’m going to guess you’ve figured it out by now, Lucifer. Yes, I _am_ a member of the CS. I was raised in a lovely little home in Sussex.  The couple that raised me were thoroughbred CS members themselves. Loyal until the day they were killed for their disloyalty. I was told all my life that I was going to be the most powerful man in Britain, so forgive me if I ever seem pompous or self-righteous; I’m riding on quite the ego. As a born and bred CS member, I’m free to make decision on my own if I feel it’s in the CS’s best interest. The collaboration between Scotland Yard and the media, controlling what the public is told about their crime and what they’re not told: that was all my idea. However, if I were to receive word from the CS patrons to restore everything to how it used to be, I would have no choice but to do so.”

“So…. the man who killed the Ukrainian Ambassador-…”

“An assassin from the CS. Someone other than myself gave him the orders to take the man out. No doubt he was meddling with one of our missions. All the word I got was that I had to cover up the murder, plant the blame on someone else. It didn’t _have_ to be Denis Koval; he just fit the bill. Like I said, if you had found someone else to take the fall, I could have easily made the necessary changes…”

“I know. I get it now.” My voice was calm, even, without guilt nor accusation. “Your hands were tied. You were just doing as you were told.”

“As you did when you were told to withhold all incongruent evidence.”

“But I _didn’t_ do what I was told, remember?”

Phineas smiled, the most genuine smile I had seen. “And that’s where you and I are drastically different, Lucifer. Where you can disobey orders without fear of any grave consequences, I can’t disobey my orders without some person I’ve never met before putting a bullet my head for disloyalty. I _envy_ the simplicity of your world, Lucifer, where there are no giants living among men, rendering people dead with a mere whisper of a command. I’ve always gone to bed, lying awake at night, fearing that I may have worded something poorly, that I may have appeared one way when I should have appeared another, that I may have made a careless decision whose ripples would frame me as disloyal… I lay awake fearing that someone might be coming to kill me in my sleep because I didn’t _think_ about every last little thing that I did, every little word that came out of my mouth, every enunciation, every stress, every frown, every smile, every laugh that slipped out.

“I forgot to mention one little thing about the CS. Not every child they raise makes it to adulthood. The suicide rate is incredibly high among us future CS members. Why? Because of the paranoia, of the rampant amount of stress, of the constant awareness that our lives were under a microscope, that one little slipup, one accidental word or giggle or the wrong choice of tie color could be the death of us. Just look at what _I_ went through. Do you know why my parents were killed? Because they received an order, a small order with no time limit, no amount of urgency, sent to them in the mail. But the mail, it all got poured on that day. The mailman shoved it all in the box and it tumbled into the street, got soaked until the ink all smeared. You couldn’t read it. My parents had no clue there was anything important amongst all the smeared ink. So they went on with their lives. And because they didn’t obey the orders they had received, the orders that had been smudged beyond recognition, they were euthanized in their sleep. Of what of little twelve-year-old me? I woke up to find my parents gone and a note telling me to relocate to an address in Canterbury. And I had to obey the order, or I, too, would be killed for my disloyalty.”

I sat there, listening to Phineas, my instant belief becoming incredulous the longer I had to reflect on the information presented to me. “You can’t honestly expect me to believe there’s some cult out there controlling what every country does, killing politicians left and right and throwing in new ones without anyone taking notice.”

Phineas sat back in his chair, a look of mild annoyance coming across his face. “I don’t expect very much from you, Lucifer, so no. I don’t expect you to take my word for it. But I know someone’s word you will take at face value. And he’s one of the highest ranking CS member there is.”

I frowned, puzzled. “Who?”

Phineas couldn’t keep the satisfied smirk from his face. “Oh I don’t know, just this guy called Mycroft Holmes. Have you heard of him?”


	6. Chapter 6

I spent the entire day there in Phineas’ office, talking with him, learning more about the secretive world that he belonged to, that apparently my Uncle Mycroft belonged to as well. I could see it in his eyes; Phineas longed for this day, where he could finally tell _someone_ about his world. So I listened. I didn’t want to believe it, I couldn’t believe it, but something inside me ached for it all to be true. At some point, Phineas broke out a bottle of scotch. The two of us managed to drink the whole thing.

“Life would be hunky-dory if it were just us in the Clandestine Syndicate,” Phineas said with an overzealous wave of his hand, words beginning to slur. “But it’s not. There are others, just like the CS, differing only because of a few conflicting opinions on where power should fall. Our biggest enemy is WOLF.”

“Like the dog..?” I snickered, twirling the ice in my empty glass.

It took Phineas a second, but he broke out into high-pitched giggles. “No, stupid! World Of Lasting Friendships. WOLF. When we have defectors, they usually defect to WOLF. That is, if we don’t manage to put a bullet in their skull first. But WOLF just _loves_ harboring our disloyal before we can get to them. We also have issues with lesser sects, like RUSE—Russians United for the Sovereign Empire—which is a Russian-based organization looking to further Russia’s interest at the expense of others, and ARROW—American Regiment to Rule Over the World—a group of American ‘patriots’ who think their country should be the most powerful. There are other smaller national groups that become a problem on a case to case basis, but those three are our biggest competitors. And WOLF our rival.”

“Soo…” I hiccupped. “My Uncle Mycroft… what does he do?”

“Good old Mycroft,” Phineas smiled, sinking ridiculously low in his chair. “He was a predecessor. That was back when the CS had a handful of people planted here in Britain. Mycroft, Magnusson, Smallwood… among others. Now they’ve shifted to focus elsewhere. It’s just me here; Britain’s entirely my responsibility. Which is great. But it’s incredibly lonely. Glad I’ve got you to talk to Lucy. You’re the best.”

“Sod off, Phineas,” I rolled my eyes. “Now, Magnusson; I’ve heard that name before. Grandpa John was always telling us kids stories after Grandma Mary disappeared. I think Magnusson might have been in one of them.”

“Journalist,” Phineas cut in. “He was a journalist. You don’t see many of them in the CS, but when you do you always know not to mess with their agenda. The hierarchy of power always went patron CS members, journalists, and then politicians. Like, if there was a journalist in power right now, and he decided he wanted to report nothing but lies about Scotland Yard cases, I wouldn’t have any say in the matter. Me, I had the opportunity to be a journalist. I fit the bill, all the traits and test results they were looking for. But I turned them down. I _wanted_ to be a politician more than anything. Other boys dreamed of growing up and becoming astronauts or football players. I dreamed of campaign slogans and empowering speeches and practiced my smile and my laugh and my wave.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You’re weird.”

Phineas rolled his eyes. “And you’re an ignorant beetle in a world full of boots.”

I glared, sitting up in my chair. “No I’m not. You’ve filled me in on just about everything now. I know just as much as you. There’s just one last question I have.”

“And what would that be?” Phineas asked, setting his scotch glass aside.

“Who was it that spooked you on Sunday? Something or someone definitely scared the living daylights out of you.”

He grew serious in an instant, just as he did that day walking down the street. He sat up, folding his hands on his desk and leaning forward, spending an extra minute to think very hard about what to say.

“Lucifer, I know this is going to be hard for you, but what we have? You and me talking, be it about secret societies or the weather, it needs to stop. The moment you walk out of my office, you don’t know me, I don’t know you. You don’t wave to me if you see me in public, and I don’t acknowledge you as anything more than just another British citizen. And most importantly of all, _do not_ talk to Mycroft Holmes about what we’ve discussed.”

“Why not?” I protested.

“Don’t,” Phineas said menacingly, eyes cold with seriousness. “Trust me. You _don’t_ want him to find out that you know _anything_ about the bigger picture. Am I perfectly clear?”

“Well yeah, but-”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“Okay but-”

“You don’t know me, do you understand?”

“Sure, but-”

“Don’t tell anyone what you know, not even Mycroft.”

“Yeah, I get it-”

“Now get out.”

“Phineas-!!”

He stood up out of his chair, straightening his tie and fixing his hair, eyes pinning me to my seat when he looked back at me, an innocent frown coming to his face.

“Excuse me?” He said, voice smooth. “Is there something I can help you with, sir..?”

Taking the hint, I got up from the armchair and exited from his office, nearly running straight into Scotland Yard’s Commissioner as I did, a beautiful blonde woman not much older than Alfred, mysteriously young to be in the position of power in the Yard that she was. I apologized, holding the door open for her as she entered into Phineas’ office. I walked out of the Diogenes Club, shaking my head. No wonder; if she knew Phineas, there’s no doubt he was the reason she was rocketed up to power as quickly as she did.

____________________________

_“So you just walked away from it all, just like that?”_

_“Well yeah.”_

_“Don’t lie to me, Lucifer. If you had taken Phineas Sinclair’s advice, you wouldn’t be here. So tell me… just when did it all go wrong?”_

____________________________

My Uncle Mycroft and I, we kept in touch. We were the only two Holmes left, after all. Well, that we knew of at the time. That _I_ knew of. Every month, the two of us would meet—usually at his home in the countryside—and have tea, chat, talk politics. Just to keep in touch. Nothing more than necessary, but just enough to satisfy our obligations to one another as family.

It had been two and a half weeks since I had last spoken to Phineas. I had seen him since, maintaining a presence out in London, once at Scotland Yard, but I kept up my promise to him and treated him as nothing more than a stranger. For a while there, I was perfectly content. I went back to my job, went back to visiting with my cousins, went back to my books, and my nothing. Near the end of the second week, I was beginning to feel it festering. The malcontent. I was starting to become aware of the insignificance. Everything I did I found myself reflecting, realizing over and over that not a single thing I did would even leave the smallest of marks on the bigger picture. If I continued on the path I was on, who would I be to my kids, to my grandkids? If someone spoke my name, would anyone know who I was? Would I have made an impact, or even an impression of some kind? By the time I was in the cab on my way to Uncle Mycroft’s in the middle of that third week of estrangement from Phineas, I was convinced that if I changed nothing in my life, I would never do anything, never become anything; my only mark on the world would be the ink staining the newspaper that would display my obituary. And when the next day’s papers would come off the press, I would literally be no more.

I managed to maintain a normal composure for the first half of our tea. We sat, sipped, chatted about the topics Uncle Mycroft thought would be to my liking: crime rates, surveys on police happiness, even the ever scandalous unsolved case kept secret from the public at large. But it didn’t take a man like Mycroft Holmes very long before he realized something was not quite right.

“What’s the matter, Lucifer?” He asked, on the verge of caring. “You don’t seem quite yourself today.”

I should probably mention that the relationship between my Uncle Mycroft and I was a strained one at best. The man didn’t care much for me, only for the fact that Holmes proceeded my name. He was the only reason I had a job. He was the only reason I had my own place of residency, even if it was hardly utilized. The man was undoubtedly embarrassed by the likes of me. If I had been nothing more than a family friend, he would have long since cut his ties with me to avoid associating with a jobless, unmotivated, moody twenty-four-year-old who still lived with his legal guardian. And personally, I wouldn’t care so much if it hadn’t been for Mycroft’s brother, my grandfather, Sherlock Holmes, who in contrast cared the world about me, supported my every action and inaction, sought me out whenever he had a moment to spare—and even whenever he didn’t—just to see how I was doing. With Sherlock gone, I was left with only Mycroft. And Mycroft couldn’t possibly come close to even marginally filling the void that Sherlock had left.

So when Mycroft noted I didn’t quite seem myself, he was saying that I was even less engaged than my usual icy blank stares and occasional nod or even rarer grunt of commentary. And that was saying quite a lot.

“You know, Uncle,” I began, keeping my voice level but not caring to keep the edginess out. “We always talk about things pertaining to _my_ work.” I fixed him with an icy stare. “I want to hear about _your_ work.”

“My work?” Mycroft chuckled good-naturedly, humoring his embarrassment of a great-nephew. “You know I’m retired, right Lucifer?”

I offered up a smile, void of any humor or pleasantness. “Oh, I know Uncle. But I want to hear about the job you had before.” I added a level of condescending enthusiasm. “Sherlock always told me the wildest of stories.”

He set his cup in his saucer, tongue probing his cheek as his chin raised ever so slightly; it was a gesture of agitation. I mimicked the chin-raise, a haughty glint in my eye, a slight smile ghosting on my parted mouth. By the time his eyes flickered back to me, I had slipped back on my mask of cold seriousness.

“I worked for the government,” he began carefully, keeping control over his tone, trying to convey a sense of boredom over the topic. “Just a minor position. Nothing interesting ever happened, really. I’m sure the stories my brother told you were just that: stories.”

“Oh I don’t know, Uncle,” my words came out biting, my temper running short. “Magnusson, Smallwood, the Clandestine Syndicate, it all sounded rather truthful to me.”

He fixed me with the most alarming of intense stares, as if he wasn’t so sure he had heard correctly. “I beg your pardon-?”

“Ah! Would you look at that!” I cut in, my attention turned to my watch as I set down my cup and saucer and stood up all at once. “It’s time for me to go.” I gave him the most naïve of smiles. “Best not be late for work, shall I?” I headed immediately for the door.

“Lucifer-!!”

“Perhaps another time, Uncle!” I called back, already throwing on my coat as I ducked out the door. “Good day!”

As soon as the door shut behind me, I sprinted away from his house. I ran up the road, trying to get as far away as possible, running until my lungs felt as though they had caught fire and that my legs had turned to jelly, and then I ran some more. As eager as I was to spite my Uncle Mycroft in the heat of the moment, I was utterly terrified of the consequences once the moment passed. Once I felt I had gotten far enough away, I phoned a cab and drove back to London. Still breathing heavily, a bit dizzy from all the running, only a single thought floated about in my head: _What now?_

____________________________

_“I imagine you contacted Phineas.”_

____________________________

I tried to, at least. He wasn’t at his office in the Diogenes Club, and it’s not like I could ask anyone where he might be; that stupid club and their stupid rule of silence. I checked the café, phoned to see if anyone had seen him at the Yard. Feeling rather desperate, my head filling with all the possibilities of how Mycroft could take action against me, I instead went directly to Parliament, got as far as I could without being escorted out. I came to a desk, where a pretty young woman eyed me approaching and spoke up sternly.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as confident as I could in my rising panic. “Does a certain Phineas Sinclair have an office here? It’s urgent that I speak with him.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“Oh good! He _does_ have an office then! What’s the room number? I can find it myself.”

“Sir, if you don’t have an appointment, I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

“Here, just…” I pulled my police notebook from my coat and scribbled down my name and cell number. “Just give this to him when you get the chance, will you?” I realized how insane I must sound, pulling out my fake police badge. “I’m Detective Inspector Anderson, investigating a couple minor counts of embezzlement. I just need to ask Mr. Sinclair a few questions is all.”

I nodded my farewell and left before she could unmask me with a little investigation of her own. I returned home by cab, sitting numbly in my bedroom, oblivious to Molly Hooper’s calls to supper. Instead, I phoned Alfie.

“DI Anderson speaking.”

“Hey Alfredo,” I said, laughing; I was excellent at sounding completely normal over the phone, despite how I might actually be feeling. “Hey, can I ask a favor?”

Alfred sighed heavily, clearly fed up with my nicknames. “What the hell do you want now, Holmes?”

“Look, I haven’t been feeling too hot these past few days. I think I might be coming down with something. If you could just give me the day off tomorrow, just in case… I’ll call you, let you know if I’m feeling up for work in the morning. It’s just-…”

“No, that’s perfectly fine, Luke,” Alfred cut in, voice sympathetic. “You’ve been working your ass of lately. You know, instead of your usual lying-around-until-you-get-called-in bullshit. Take the day tomorrow. If you’re feeling well enough for work afterwards, you come in. If you don’t, you don’t. It’s fine. Hope you feel better soon, little buddy.”

“Hey, thanks Alfie,” I said, sounding genuinely relieved. “And hey, when you see me again, I’ll have a box of your favorite donuts in my hands, as a means to say thanks.”

He laughed bitterly. “That’s real sweet of you, Luke, but one more of those damn things and I’ll be so pudgy my girlfriend just might walk out on me.” There was a pause. “I’ve got to go.”

“Yeah, no problem. Bye Alfie. And thanks again.”

I hung up, tossing my phone aside on my bed before falling backwards, laying and staring at the ceiling. There was nothing more I could do besides just wait and hope Phineas reached out to me.

____________________________

_“I’m assuming he did.”_

_“Well, sort of. He didn’t reach out directly. His secretary did.”_

_“Go on.”_

____________________________

She called me early on that next day. I hadn’t spent a second away from my phone since hanging up with Alfie, so I answered within a single ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Detective Inspector Anderson?”

“May I ask who’s calling?”

“I’m Mr. Sinclair’s secretary. I was informed by a woman at the front desk that you were looking to get in touch with him.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Mr. Sinclair would like to meet you in exactly four hours from now at his office.”

“Perfect! And what office would that be?”

“The woman at the front desk will escort you. Good morning.”

“Good morni-” The line clicked dead before I could finish, leaving me feeling relieved but also incredibly nervous. Phineas wouldn’t have agreed to meet with me if he didn’t know something had gone wrong. Which left the question, how did he know? Was he just assuming, or had he gotten word—some order maybe—that had tipped him off?

Molly Hooper kept at me the entire four hours I had to wait around. She berated me with questions. Why wasn’t I eating? I’m not hungry. Why wasn’t I at work? I took a day. Why? Are you feeling okay? Yeah, I should be fine with a little rest. Where are you running off to? I have to be somewhere. Shouldn’t you be staying home if you’re not feeling well? I’ll just be a minute.

I caught a cab to take me to Parliament, staring out the window the entire time, watching the people as we passed. How many of them were aware? Of the secret societies, the corruption, of the giants that controlled their entire world? How many of them knew that one of those giants sat in the countryside just outside of London, spending his days sipping tea, eating cake, and giving out world-altering orders?

When I got to Parliament, I made my way to the lady at the front desk as I had the day before, hardly aware of my surroundings as I my head swarmed with worries.

“Ah, DI Anderson. Mr. Sinclair is expecting you.”

I nodded, following her as she led me down a maze of hallways, coming to the end of one and gesturing to the door. I walked ahead, knocking softly. A heard Phineas’ voice from the other side, nothing but business: “Enter.”

I opened the door, finding his office to be expansive but utterly plain compared to his office at the Diogenes Club, a total disappointment to my rampant imagination. Phineas eyed me from behind his oaken desk, tone pleasant but expression dead serious.

“Ah, Lucifer. Please, sit.”

I sat in the armchair across from his desk, noting its severe inferior quality compared to the chair I had lounged in at the Diogenes Club.

“Comfy?” He asked pleasantly, leaning forward on his desk.

“Yeah…” I said meekly.

“Good,” he flashed a smile, than became instantly furious. “Care to explain why the hell you decided to arrange a meeting with me? You know, after I _deliberately_ warned you not to!!”

I opened my mouth to object, but Phineas was not done venting.

“Oh, let me guess. You only broke our rule of not associating because you had already broken another one. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you went and blabbed to Mycroft.”

“Phineas-…”

“Well?! Did you or did you not?”

“I-I did, but-”

“Lucifer, of _all_ the things I told you _not_ to do, which did I give the most emphasis?”

“Don’t talk to Mycroft about the CS…”

“So do you mind telling me what the _hell_ you were thinking!?”

Thinking back to the whole reason I had revealed my knowledge to my Uncle Mycroft in the first place, I suddenly grew very indignant and angry.

“I don’t want to just move on with my life! Pretend I don’t know you or the things you’re apart of! World-shaking things, the stuff that will have whole books dedicated to it in a century, the sort of stuff future generations will pinpoint as what changed the world for the better! I don’t want to be just another cop that works, grows old, retires, and does nothing to be remembered by!”

Phineas pulled a disgusted face. “Don’t be ridiculous, Lucifer! You don’t want the ruin your life!”

“If that’s what you call making a difference, than _yes¸_ I _do_!”

“Is that what we’re doing? Sharing little truths with one another?” He snorted contemptuously. “Fine then. I don’t want to be a poor sport. You go first, Lucifer. Give me a little truth.”

I composed myself enough to sound serious. “Phineas, I want to help you with the work that you do.”

Phineas nodded, his motions exaggerated and mocking. “Good, good. My turn. Lucifer, the moment you step out of this room, you’re going to be kidnapped.”

“I thought we were being truthful with each other!” I snapped, sick and tired of his arrogance.

“Oh, you don’t think I’m being truthful? Than go on. Walk out of here. See what happens.”

“You know what!? _Fine!!_ ” I stood up from my chair, livid, marching to the door defiantly. “Let’s see what happens, shall we?”

I should have been more keyed in to the fact of just how grave Phineas looked as he watched me head for the door. “You leave my office, Lucifer, and what happens will be out of my hands.”

“Yeah, whatever!” I rolled my eyes, opening the door and stepping outside. “See-?”

The door slammed shut in front of my eyes. Before I had even a moment to blink, something was choking me, smothering my nose and mouth. I struggled, tried to call out for help, but I was quickly becoming nauseous, dizzy, distant. The next thing I knew, everything went black.


	7. Chapter 7

_“Describe to me the scene when you came to.”_

_Lucifer smiled wistfully. “Gorgeous.”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_“Sorry. I’ll start from the beginning…”_

____________________________

When I woke back up, it took me quite a while to get a grip in reality again. My head was still swimming from the drugs used to knock me out, but I slowly realized I was on a plane. A small private jet, to be more specific. I tried to move, but I found my hands and ankles to be zip-tied, and I was buckled into one of the seats. For a second, the thought crossed my mind that I was alone on the plane, that it was falling to the ground, that I was about to die. And I was oddly okay with that. But then I heard someone speak to me from behind.

“Oh good, you’re awake.”

And that was the moment I met the fantastic and beautiful Ashley May. She sat in the chair across from me, her copper blonde hair bouncing, bangs in her smiling dark eyes, her smile contagious, her skin flawless as porcelain, her round face absolutely glowing with kindness. One look at her and my heart ached to know her name, forgetting all about where I was or what sort of danger I could be in.

“You’re Lucifer Holmes, right?” She giggled to herself. “Just want to make sure I grabbed the right guy.”

“Yeah, yeah that’s me,” I laughed breathily, a goofy smile stuck on shocked face.

She giggled again, clearly amused by my stupor; good God, I blushed darker than a damn tomato.

“A-Alright, so you kidnapped me,” I said matter-of-factly, trying to compensate for my social fumbling. “Now what?”

“I’m a currier, not a kidnapper, curls,” she smiled. “So now I deliver you.”

She cut the zip-ties from my wrists and ankles, bringing me a glass of water and some peanuts, munching on some herself as she sat across from me, smiling still. The two of us got to talking.

“So you’re a currier?” I asked, curious as I sipped my water. “Is that a position in the CS hierarchy?”

She was completely unimpressed that I knew about the CS. No doubt she already knew I knew. That’s why she was sent to fetch me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. When the CS needs people to come into their home base, it’s a currier’s job to do the transporting. Our enemies usually know our political members, but they don’t know the curriers, so we’re safe to swoop in and remove members all cloak and dagger. And when they’re no longer needed, it’s a currier’s job to get them back safe and sound.”

“Don’t people notice when one of their political figures goes missing?”

She laughed. “Not if they’re told they took a vacation. Political figures are _always_ taking vacations, are they not?”

I smiled. “That’s clever. But why am _I_ here?”

She shrugged. “I don’t make the calls. I just carry them out. Sorry, curls.”

“Oh it’s not a problem, bangs.” I grinned.

We talked for the whole flight, laughing and learning more and more about each other. I learned that Ashley May had been adopted from an orphanage in China at the age of four, and was brought up by Mycroft’s assistance Anthea, attending a boarding school for CS kids in Madrid. Ashley May spoke eight languages just as well as English, and knew enough about the composition of linguistics to get by in just about any language. She has also experimented with eight hair colors before landing on the copper blonde she now sported.

“This week is an excellent one for you to be visiting HQ,” she told me excitedly. “Every three years, the entirety of the CS meets at the HQ for a meeting to talk updates to our goals and such. For the past month we’ve been bringing in all our members in the field to HQ one at a time to inform them of the date of the meeting. We can’t send word, in fear that WOLF might intercept the information. If they ever found out where our HQ is located, _and_ when all the CS members will be meeting there, they could literally wipe our organization out in seconds. So we bring our members in, tell them the date, tell them the password, and then take them back. But some members that don’t occupy political positions make a vacation out of it, hang out at the HQ for a few days before going back to their missions. We’ve got quite a few wonderful members at the HQ as of now. I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”

“But I’m not a member,” I said, confused.

She winked. “You’re a close relative of Mycroft’s. That’s good enough for me.”

“Now,” she began, adopting a more business-like tone. “Drink this.”

She held out a glass to me that looked to be nothing more than water. I took the glass, instincts screaming suspicion.

“What’s in it?” I asked carefully.

“It’ll knock you out. Can’t let you know how to get to our home base, now could I? I was supposed to slip it in your drink earlier, but I was enjoying our conversation far too much. So if you don’t mind…” She gestured to the glass encouragingly.

With a resigning sigh, I wrinkled my nose and gulped down a mouthful of the drugged water, which had a slight bitterness to it. Last thing I remember I was looking at Ashley May, about to tell her it wasn’t working. Then I blacked out.

I woke back up to find myself in some sort of office. Immediately I could tell it was underground by the permeating damp chill given off by the walls. The office was decorated with baroque taste and an intimidating palette of dark greys and blacks and minimal white. It took me a few minutes to fully recover from the drugs, my head taking some time to clear and regain its processing abilities to their full extent. By the time I was fully functional, the door opened, and in came Ashley May, having changed from her modest touristy outfit to a tight-fitting lime tank top beneath a fitted leather jacket and a pair of snug athletic shorts. She was unstrapping a pair of fight gloves from her hands, panting, smiling at me.

“Hey curls,” she said. “Ready for your tour?”

“Are we in the HQ..?” I asked, rubbing my head that ached just a bit.

“Yeah,” she laughed. “Where did you think I was taking you? Tahiti?”

I smiled sheepishly, standing. “Yeah, guess that was a dumb question…”

“Come on,” she grinned, leading me out the door and through a series of hallways dotted with shut doors, before eventually arriving upon a spacious two-story white-walled room for of training equipment and computers and maps and all sorts of technology I did have a name for.

“This is The Hub,” she said walking backwards as she gestured around, smiley as ever. “It’s where everyone can sort of hang out, train, nap, whatever. It’s where you come when you want to be social with other members currently at HQ.”

The sound of a muffled gunshot caught my attention, and I noticed two guys off to one side of The Hub, shooting into what I could only imagine was a shooting range built into one of the walls. The two men were practically identical apart from one wearing a blindfold while the other handed him different guns from an impressive collection sitting on a table beside them. The blindfolded guy sized up the gun put into his hands, brought it up to shooting position and fired at one of the targets, hitting it right in the head; the whole process took him no more than five seconds.

“Come on, Franz!” Ashley teased as she led me over to them. “Ferdie’s still got you beat by a full half second!”

“ _Lügen!_ ” The guy with the blindfold snapped in German— _Lies_!—as he took of the fabric blocking his vision. “We both know Ferdie’s been peaking!!”

The other guy—Ferdie—, who now appeared slightly shorter and had a tiny bit more reticular face up close, grinned disarmingly. “I’ve done no such thing, Bruder.”

The slightly taller man with a more angular face—Franz—became distracted from his argument by me.

“ _Wer ist das_?” He asked Ashley in German— _Who is this_?—as if assuming I couldn’t understand him. I _could_.

“A guest,” she chimed. “Mr. Lucifer Holmes.”

“Holmes?” Ferdie cocked his head in intrigue. “As in Mycroft Holmes?”

“My great uncle,” I nodded.

“Well it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Holmes Junior,” Franz smiled charmingly as he offered a hand, his English almost flawless, with only the hint of a German accent magnified in certain words and phrases. “My name is Franz Boehler, and this less handsome version of me we call Ferdie.”

“Make that the _more_ handsome version,” Ferdie corrected with a gracious smile.

“So what do you guys do here for the Clandestine Syndicate..?” I asked a bit shyly, not sure what sort of questions were allowed and which ones weren’t. “Are you two political figures, or-…”

“Assassins,” they corrected in unison.

“Assassins…?” I was shocked.

“We watch our political figures,” said Franz.

“Make sure they don’t defect,” added Ferdie.

“And if they do,”

“We kill them.”

“We also get close with unaligned political figures.”

“And their friends and families.”

“If we get the order,”

“We take those guys out too.”

“Makes room for our people.”

I looked at the two of them, who remained utterly professional about their heinous job. “And what happens if one of you two defect…? Who kills you..?”

“We do,” they answered, again in unison.

“Well, it’s first come first serve,” corrected Ferdie off-handedly.

“Though everyone knows I’d have Ferdie dead faster than he could even _think_ about killing me.”

“Oh really? But who’s the one who’s a whole half a second faster on the blind shot?”

Franz turned on his brother in fury. “I told you you’re peaking!!”

“Am not!! You’re just slow!”

The two of them squabbled, quickly slipping into German as their argument grew more heated. Ashley took me by the arm and led me away.

“Let’s meet some others, shall we?” She laughed.

She led me out of The Hub and down a hallway, at the end of which was a small and modest lounge, with a worn out sofa and atrociously-colored arm chairs and a TV displaying a Russian sitcom, as well as a foosball table. On the couch sat a mean looking guy no older than twenty, head shaven with a hardened expression, icy eyes glued dully to the TV, puffing on a cigarette. Another guy of about the same age was playing foosball all on his lonesome, with upwardly styled warm brown hair and happy grey eyes. As Ashley and I entered the room, the guy playing foosball looked up, breaking into a friendly and genuine smile.

“Afternoon, Ms. Ashley,” he greeted in a thick Russian accent.

“Hello Vsevolod.” Ashley smiled back. “Meet Mr. Lucifer Holmes. Our guest.”

She turned to me. “Luke, this is Vsevolod and Jaeger, two of our best Russian operatives.”

“Good to meet you, small Holmes,” Vsevolod beamed. “Don’t mind Jaeger. He hates everyone.”

A snort of contempt was heard from the serious Russian on the couch.

“So,” I began, eyeing up Jaeger curiously. “What do you two do?”

“Assassins,” Vsevolod answered. “And if the calling should come, revolutionists.”

“From what I’ve heard, _that_ won’t happen anytime soon,” Ashley rolled her eyes.

She clapped her hands in a gesture of finality. “Well, this was a good talk. Come on Luke. We don’t want to be late!” Ashley turned and left the room, arm hooking mine to drag me along.

“Nice to meet you Vsevolod! And you too Jaeger..!”

“Goodbye small Holmes!” Vsevolod waved, nudging Jaeger to provide a goodbye; in return, Jaeger grabbed onto his partner’s arm and slung him over the couch and onto the ground. I didn’t see what happened next, as Ashley quickly shut the door.

“The two of them are great in the field,” she commented as she led me back to The Hub. “But take them out of the field, and tensions get high between them. Jaeger’s not the type to adjust to civilian life.”

“Ah…” I nodded. “So what exactly are we late for..?”

“Mr. Mycroft wanted to meet with you in precisely five minutes. Which means we should be in his office by now.”

She led me back to the office in which I had first woken up, finding that my Uncle Mycroft now sat at the desk, browsing through stacks upon stacks of reports. He looked up as we entered, a smile plastering itself half-heartedly to his face.

“Ah, thank you Ashley. That should be all for now.”

With a slight and gracious bow, Ashley took her leave of the office, flashing me one last smile before she slipped out the door and shut it behind her. With her gone, my attention was turned completely to Mycroft, who had stood and walked around his desk to face me.

“So, you know about my job,” he stated evenly.

“Yeah. I do.” I replied curtly.

“Phineas told you, didn’t he?”

“What does it matter?” I said more defensively than I would have liked.

Mycroft shrugged easily. “It doesn’t. What matters now is that you’re here.”

I have to admit, his attitude took me completely by surprise. I had expected him to be furious with me, with my knowing of his secret society of sorts. He must have been able to read my thoughts, based on his response.

“I was debating on whether or not to involve you for a while now. I suppose you made that choice for yourself.”

“I suppose I did,” I replied numbly, still shocked over how well things were going.

“Well Lucifer,” he shifted his footing, looking back at me. “I would like to take a moment to formally invite you to join our little organization here. As a part-time member, of course. You’re simply not qualified for a full-time position.”

“Understood,” I nodded, unable to help but break into an excited grin. “And I accept!”


	8. Chapter 8

My uncle and I, we talked for hours. He was filling our conversation with stories of legendary CS members and their heroic and humorous adventures. I enjoyed the stories, so I didn’t bring up the fact that he was deliberately avoiding telling me any real details about the organization and what it was I would be doing with my new part-time membership. He was just finishing up a story of how his old friend—the wife of a powerful dictator—single handedly took down his regime and reformed the country just by serving beer laced with a ridiculous amount of liquefied potassium supplement to her husband and his inner circle during their monthly poker night. A couple sips later and she was in charge. We were laughing, shaking our heads, when Mycroft finally decided to say something of value.

“So Lucifer, I want to tell you about our future goals as an organization,” he eyed me seriously. “As a member, our goals should be your goals. Our beliefs, motivation, loyalty, should all be yours.”

“Of course,” I nodded, mimicking his seriousness.

Satisfied, he continued. “As I’m sure Ashley May had informed you, the triennial meeting of our organization in its entirety is scheduled to occur quite soon. As customary, we’ll be unveiling our latest plans for improving the efficiency of the CS.” He smirked proudly. “There’s always room for improvement, though I doubt they’ll be much room left after we perfect this next stage. Care for a sneak-peak?”

I smiled eagerly. “If it’s not too much to ask.”

We left his office, snaking through a maze of hallways to an elevator. Mycroft pressed his ID to the scanner, and with a contented beep, the door slid open. I followed inside behind him, glancing at the buttons. We were on floor -15. Mycroft pressed the button for floor -50. There were countless more below that. I didn’t have the time to count, as the elevator zoomed downward at five times the speed of a normal elevator, nearly throwing me off my feet; Mycroft stood unfazed, a look of satisfaction on his face over my surprise.

The doors slid open without warning, and Mycroft exited in stride as I stumbled out behind him, gawking at the sight that greeted us. The 50th subterranean floor opened to a hallway, cutting through an expansive, impressive, futuristic laboratory, glowing white walls with blue lights and wires snaking around in thick tangled piles beneath a glass floor. I followed Mycroft as he got to the end of the hall, having to scan his card to open a one-way-glass door. We repeated the process several times over, filing our way down the main hallway and opening the doors at the end, delving deeper and deeper into the secrets held within. Finally, one of the glass door slid aside to reveal a room expansive like The Hub, full of exercise equipment and bookshelves and expensive looking medical equipment. Loitering about in this huge room was a single figure, perched atop a punching bag, fingers moving rapidly across a gaming controller, eyes glued one of many of the TVs lining the walls. At the sound of the door sealing shut, he paused the game and looked over, smiling and coming over to Mycroft and I.

“Lucifer, I’d like you to meet Subject Zero,” Mycroft stated matter-of-factly, though pride steeping into his voice.

I was speechless. The guy who stood before me couldn’t have been older than 20, maybe 21 at best, with a face reminiscent of a puppy, curious brown eyes, a smile warm and charming enough to melt a heart in an instance, messy brown hair tucked up beneath a backwards-facing flat-rimmed cap.

“Lucifer,” Subject Zero said in a raspy, light-hearted tone that caused my heart to skip a beat. “That’s a fun name. Where’d that one come from?”

It took me a second to register that he had even asked me a question; I was still caught up in the sheer attractiveness of his voice. “My mother. She hated me. So she named me after the devil.”

He laughed; if I thought I had already fallen head over heels, than I did backflips at the sound.

“That’s nice,” he grinned, eyes crinkling up beneath his smile. “I’ve got a boring name.”

“Subject Zero?” I asked, still quite dumbfounded.

He laughed a bit again. “Nah, mate. My name’s Charles. Charles Arthur Bennet Alistar.”

He offered out a hand to me, and I took it, giving it a firm shake. His hands tucked themselves back into the pouch pocket of his oversized sweatshirt when it was all said and done. All I could think of was how pissed Phineas would be over this Charles character. And how much Ashley May would laugh me out of the room.

“So… what’s with the Subject Zero stuff..?” I asked, turning to Mycroft, who had stood by silently. “Is he on some new drug or something? Why isn’t he upstairs with the Germans and Russians and Ashley?”

Mycroft inhaled, somewhat exasperated. “Subject Zero here is the product of a genetic experiment that began decades ago, conducted by our best and brightest partner at the time, Melissa Alistar.”

“Uncle James’ mom..?” I asked curiously.

“Yes, the same.” Mycroft answered in mild annoyance. “As you are well aware, your Uncle James was the result of a genetic experiment funded by his father. When his father turned up presumably dead, Melissa’s work needed funding to continue. I began funding her to see the extent that her work could be applied. When I realized the implications of what could be done with her cutting-edge technique of genetic manipulation, I petitioned the CS to partner with her and fund a project. And they did. They transferred her to Liechtenstein where she could work in secret. Unfortunately, WOLF got word of our little project and starting poking their nose around in search of the one in charge of it; that was Melissa, of course. They eventually found out about her and Jim Moriarty and bribed him for the information. He gave away her location, and a month later she got caught up in what was called an uprising and turned up executed. But we all knew it was all orchestrated by WOLF.”

“Project? What project, exactly?”

Mycroft gestured to Charles. “Creating the prefect member. Intelligent, charismatic, athletic, charming, attractive, incredibly loyal. Flexible to fill any position needed: political figure, assassin, celebrity, currier, field team. Anything. It was a stroke of misfortune to lose Melissa when we did. It took our best minds over a decade to even figure out what she was up to, let alone the time it took them to become proficient at her techniques and technologies. She only had one embryo in storage that she had told us was ready before she was taken out. So we grew said embryo. Raised it. And the result was Charles here.”

I eyed the kid carefully; I couldn’t think of him as anything more than a kid with his puppyish face and my three or four years on him. Through the entire conversation, he didn’t appear at all bothered by the fact that he was nothing more than an experiment to Mycroft and the CS. I doubt it didn’t bother him, though; he was most likely just incredibly used to being referred to in that fashion.

“So your next step as an organization,” I began, choosing my words carefully. “Is to… _craft_ your members? Formulate a genome for a flawless follower and copy and paste it into a ton of embryos. You’re basically farming your next generation of operatives.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“And how do you think current members are going to react to the news? Don’t you think they’ll feel threatened by this uprising of prefects?”

“Absolutely not,” Mycroft defended. “We need our current members where they are, and also to raise our new members. You can’t exactly program loyalty to the CS into a genome. That part is dependent on the environment in which the subject is raised. Take Charles here. He was raised by my associate Anthea, alongside our lovely and talented currier Ashley May.”

“Don’t be so modest, Mycroft Drones-On-Forever!” Charles teased cheekily, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. “You helped out. Miss Anthea was too busy with all your damn paperwork to bring us up all on her lonesome!”

Mycroft eyed the adorable kid, unamused. Charles eyes crinkled at his grin and his tongue pressed up against his teeth in further amusement.

Mycroft sighed. “I should probably inform you at this point, Lucifer, that you and Charles here will be partners in the field. Field Team will be your assignment, as it is for most all part-timers.”

“Field Team?” I said, wrinkling my nose. “That sounds boring. What do we do, run errands? Fetch you coffee”

“No, mate! Field Team is top-notch stuff!” Charles said, unable to keep the enthusiasm from his voice. “It’s all the undercover operations and spy stuff. You Holmes guys are famous for being the best of the field team, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine!”

“What?” I said flatly, though eyeing Mycroft with a sharpness that could kill.

By the look of inconvenient annoyance that came over Mycroft’s face, I could tell he didn’t want me knowing. He opened his mouth to spin some lie, but Charles spoke up first.

“Don’t you know? Sherlock Holmes, Daniel Holmes, Hamish Holmes: they’re legendary!”

“No, I didn’t know,” I snapped, bitterness laced into my words, causing Charles to frown in innocent bafflement and Mycroft to pinch the bridge of his nose out of stressfulness.

“Later,” Mycroft cut in. “We’ll talk about this _later_ , Lucifer. For now, I have meetings to attend to. Feel free to get acquainted with your new partner in my absence. And Charles,” he eyed the guy with a deathly seriousness. “Not another word on the subject.”

Charles made a zipping motion across his mouth, brown eyes wide with the fear that comes from acknowledging a mistake. With a resolute nod, Mycroft turned on his heel and walked back to the door. Returning to the elevator, there was no need to scan his card; the doors opened as he approached, motion-sensitive. The moment the door shut, I turned on Charles with a viciousness in my eyes.

“Tell me.” I demanded threateningly.

“I honestly don’t know much,” he admitted with a lopsided frown. “I don’t get to talk to many people. I supposed to be a surprise, remember?”

“Well you clearly know more than I do!” I snapped.

He shrugged, eyes wandering to avoid meeting mine. In an instant, I was furious. You have to understand, most days I don’t even want to _think_ about my dad or my Grandpa Sherlock. The two of them left me with a dangerous cocktail of emotions: abandonment, depression, anger, self-loathing, just to name a few of the things that would hit me whenever I thought of them. But to hear someone _talk_ about either of them—and mention things that I didn’t know—it was a whole different ballgame. I never understood why they had to go and leave me like they did. But the notion that they were somehow involved with the CS, it would explain so much. I _wanted_ to know everything, but the last thing I needed was to hear a single word about them. But to be _refused_ information when I asked for it… that just set me off.

In the blink of an eye, I had two fistfuls of Charles’ sweatshirt in a death grip, throwing him up against a punching bag. Another blink found me on the ground, dizzied from the slam onto the floor as my feet came out from under me, due to a skillful kick from Charles. A well-aimed kick to the back of his knee found Charles and I back on an even level, the two of up grabbing and kicking and punching and scrambling on the ground. Blood was filling up my mouth; my nose throbbed from the askew angle it was punched into; his cheek had turned blue and black and red from the bruising and blood, his eye swelling shut from where my foot had smashed into it; a tooth stood out in a puddle of blood on the tile floor.

I was looking around at everything, my left ear ringing, my senses slowed. Charles, too, was distancing himself, in shock from the sudden outburst of violence. Unfortunately for the both of us, I was just getting started. I wiped blood away from my mouth with a fist, wiping my fist clean on my blood-smattered shirt. A smile twitched on my face just before my fist met Charles in the jaw, throwing him across the floor. I got to my feet as I watched him groan, limbs moving sluggishly as he tried to sit up. Next thing I knew, he was on his feet, anger burning bright in his eyes as he smacked both his hands over my ears, completely disorienting me. I hardly remember the sight of his fist flying at me before it smashed up under my chin and succeeded in knocking me out cold.


	9. Chapter 9

_“So, you meet the Clandestine Syndicate’s secret weapon, a genetically engineered agent, and you decide to fight him.”_

_“Yes. Exactly.”_

_“Let me just ask… do you have a death wish, Lucifer?”_

_“No. Anger issues? Yeah, definitely.”_

_“I see. And what happened after you got knocked out by—what was it you called him?—Subject Zero?”_

____________________________

Next thing I knew I was back on a plane. My Uncle Mycroft was there this time around, much to my disappointment. He frowned at me as I came to, a half-empty glass of scotch in his hand.

“Glad you know how to conduct yourself professionally, Lucifer.” He remarked bitterly, sipping from his glass with a sour expression.

I remembered everything instantly, of course, glaring. “He wouldn’t tell me about my dad or Grandpa Sherlock.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Mycroft scoffed, unamused. “No one’s gonna breathe a word to you now.”

I came to the edge of my seat immediately, poised to jump my uncle, ready for beat the answer I sought out of him. He stopped me with a raised hand.

“We’re not doing this right now, Lucifer. Sit your ass back down.”

Slowly, I did as I was told. There was something about his tone, something suggesting that I would get my answers. In time. And for as ill-tempered as I was, I was equally as patient. So I decided to wait it out, stick with my course and hope the answers would come soon enough. For now.

“Where are we headed” I asked, maintaining my cool.

“Home,” he answered, still in a foul mood.

“What?! But why?”

“Because,” he sighed in annoyance. “After your little incident with Subject Zero, I think you could use a little cool down before the two of you work together in the field. Besides, I’ll have to do a right amount of digging to find you two some work that’ll suit agents of…. your caliber…”

“Whatever you say,” I rolled my eyes, not looking forward to meeting up with Charles after beating him to a pulp, let alone having to do spy stuff with him.

“Just keep a low profile. Take some personal downtime. Who knows,” Mycroft flashed a fake smile. “If you end up performing well in the field, you could find downtime to be in short supply.”

It didn’t take us long to touch down in London and grab a taxi home. I remember I rolled up to Molly Hooper’s apartment, looking like I had just come from a nasty bar fight, searching my pockets for the keys when the door flew open. Johnny and Lily greeted me with scrutinizing glares.

“For fuck’s sake Lou!” Lily exclaimed in exasperation, dark unwashed hair falling in her tired eyes. “Care to explain where the hell you were?”

“Cocaine? Honestly Lilliana, I thought you were better than that.” I pushed past the two of them, sulking straight for my room. My cousins followed in tow, Lily turned absolutely livid.

“Oh you think you’re so clever, don’t you fuck-face!?” She snarled. “Care to tell us what you were doing getting in a fight with a prick in an underground gym in Switzerland!?”

Her deduction came rather unexpectedly. I whirled around to face them, snagging them both by the arms and yanking them into my bedroom, shutting the door behind us.

“What? What is it, Luke?” Johnny asked, concern growing with my suspicious actions. “Seriously, you can tell us anything. We’re not narks.”

“Well?” Lily smirked darkly, arms crossed across her greasy, diesel-reeking tank top. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

I pointed a finger at her accusingly. “Shut up for a quick second, Lily-Lamb. You’re about to get us all murdered with that snog-happy mouth of yours!”

She would have come at me, fists flying, at the nasty accusation, but Johnny held her back, as level as ever. “We’re listening, Luke. What aren’t you telling us?”

I took one look at them, my cousins, my best friends, my _only_ friends. Johnny was as loyal and steady as they come, and Lily more fiercely devoted and silver-tongued than most. And I knew, in that moment, the three of us all panicked and angry and lost, that I could trust them with anything. So I told them. Told them about Phineas. Told them about the CS and WOLF and the other secret groups and all of it. I told them about Mycroft, all I could tell them about Sherlock and my dad, Subject Zero, Ashley May. I told them everything.

I can still picture their faces plain as day. Johnny hardly seemed phased. I might as well have told him it was going to rain while he was under the impression of clear skies all day long. He was ever so good at taking things in stride, be it good news or bad. Lily, on the other hand, sat with mouth hanging wide open, a glint in her tired eyes infested with mischief and wonder. I could already see the wheels turning in her head over how she could use my new spy status to her advantage. At that point, Humphrey had squeezed his fat self through that cat door on my bedroom door and had made himself comfortable at my side, purring, content to have me home. No one was able to get a question in edgewise before the bell rung at the door, causing Humphrey to start and reposition; after all, we rarely heard the bell, as we rarely had visitors. As if we all could feel just how important and out of place this visit was, none of us said a word, listening intently for whoever’s voice would greet Molly. We heard nothing.

“Luke! There’s a friend of yours here to see you!” Molly called cheerily.

“Friend?” Johnny expressed quizzically, voicing all of our thoughts at once.

I stood, heading to see who it was. Lily grinned nastily.

“Hey, I bet it’s those spy people! Don’t let them brainwash you, Loser!

I arrived at the door to find it had been shut. Perplexed, I headed into the kitchen to find Molly setting out a plate of cookies.

“Who was at the door, Molly..?” I asked, eyeing her with a degree of worry.

“Ah, there you are old boy!”

My blood turned to ice as Phineas embraced me in a full on bear hug, dressed in a tattered pair of jeans and a varsity jacket, hair a stylish mess, not nearly as much makeup caked onto his dumb face as there usually once. He pulled away, grinning like some excitable frat boy.

Molly was smiling at the two of us, overlooking my terrified expression. “You never told me about Finn. He said you two were college buddies?”

“I studied online,” I corrected coldly, willing to do anything to convince Molly to boot Phineas from our home.

“Not for grad school, mate,” Phineas laughed, voice injected full of superfluous character, grabbing me by the shoulders and giving me a jostle of comradery. “Biochem boys stick together, ain’t that right?”

I was slowly beginning to realize there would be no escape. Phineas wanted to see me, like _really_ wanted to, so much so that he was willing to act an idiot just for the chance to talk. I began to play along, curious as to what Phineas could want, and quite frankly enjoying his little charade.

“Oh right!” I exclaimed, hitting my forehead in a gesture of idiocy. “How could I forget! Finny boy! It’s great to see you again!” I snagged him in a headlock and gave him a noogie to the head.

Phineas let out a cheerful—but hinting at irritated—laugh. “I knew you hadn’t forgotten me, Lucy-Goosey!”

Molly Hooper was satisfied by our affectionate displays towards one another, and decided to give us some space to catch up on old times. The moment she left the room, my headlock tightened, my hand covering Phineas’ mouth, and I dragged him to my bedroom kicking and struggling. I kicked the door shut behind us as Lily and Johnny stared. I let Phineas go, and he stumbled back, panting, placid a momet before his hand whipped out like lightning, grabbing a hold of my shirt, other hand cocked back and ready to knock me out cold.

“Do us all a favor, Lucy,” Phineas breathed menacingly, the monotone returned to his voice. “And don’t you dare try to humiliate me ever again.”

“Well let me guess! This is Phineas fucking Sinclair!” Lily wrinkled her nose, smacking on some nicotine gum she found hidden in my nightstand drawers.

“The same,” he smirked. “Lilliana Cassandra Watson, I presume? And Johnathan Sherlock Scott Watson?”

“Yeah,” Johnny answered evenly.

“Pleasure,” Phineas gave a slight bow. “I’m guessing Lucifer has told you just about everything by now, hasn’t he?”

“You bet your ass he has!” Lily snapped.

Phineas smirked again, utterly amused by the foul-mouth train wreck. “Wonderful.” He eyed me. “Well don’t just stand there. Fill me in.”

And so I did. I told Phineas everything that happened since my kidnapping outside his office door. As expected, he rolled his eyes in boredom as I went on and on about just how wonderful Ashley May was, but the first word out of my mouth about Subject Zero had him purple with jealousy. It would have been cute, if it wasn’t so damn scary. Once I got to the point where Mycroft and I were flying home, I went silent. Phineas sat there, a subtle frown stuck on his face, silent for a long minute.

“So you’re a member now?”

“Yeah.”

“Part of the field team?”

“That’s what I’ve been told.”

“With this experimental member character?”

“Assuming he doesn’t request a new partner after our little scuffle.”

His blank, frowning expression turned thoughtful with the simple raise of his eyebrows. “Field team. That’s fun. All espionage and classic spy material. It suits you, it really does. You’re going to have to think on your feet, you understand? Or else you’ll end up dead. And we can’t have that.”

I smiled a bit. “No, we can’t.”

Lily snorted. “I don’t see why not… me and Johnny would get your apartment then, wouldn’t we Loser?”

I looked at Lily. “No. The will stipulates that the apartment goes to Humphrey.”

The huge grey cat lifted his head and mewed at the sound of his name.

Lily wrinkled her nose. “How does a cat inherit an apartment? He can’t even take care of himself!”

“Well of course he’d live with whomever receives guardianship over him. It’s all in the will.”

Phineas was giving me an odd look. “You have a will? Aren’t you twenty-something..?”

Lily crossed her arms. “Well? Who gets Humphrey?”

“Well Johnny, obviously.” I shrugged.

Johnny pumped his fist in the air, grinning. “Yes!!”

“Bullshit!” Lily pouted.

“Sorry Lily,” I sighed, shaking my head. “But Humphrey’s a man’s cat. Plus, you’re currently not old enough to inherit an apartment in Humphrey’s name.”

“Humphrey loves me!” She protested, popping another piece of nicotine gum into her mouth. “Isn’t that right, Humph-Humph?”

She reached out and ran her fingers through the cat’s thick fur, causing him to arch his back into her touch, purring. “See?”

“Oh please,” Johnny laughed. “Humphrey loves everyone!”

We were all startled at the sound of Humphrey’s grumpy hiss, looking to find Phineas poised mid-pet.

“Everyone except Phineas,” I corrected.

We laughed as Phineas sulked, eyeing my cat with a look of utter betrayal.

This was really and truly the last time things were so simple and carefree from the lot of us. Thinking back on it, I wonder if I would have still gone through with the new membership knowing all that would happen because of it…

____________________________

_“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? But first, let’s skip to when Mycroft Holmes found you that job.”_

_“It couldn’t have been more than two weeks later…”_

____________________________

For me, things had settled back into their normal routine. I read in my free time. I combed over dead bodies when Alfie called me in. I stayed up in the lab putting evidence together. Every time, I wondered which of my criminals were just innocents, victims of a bigger picture.  Alfie noticed something was wrong before the first week was out. He called me into his office after everyone else had gone home.

“You wanted to see me, Alfredo?”

He was standing facing the door, leaning back on his desk with arms crossed; his sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, an unconscious sign of just how swamped he was in his work.

“Talk to me Luke,” he said, tired. “Something’s wrong. What’s up?”

“I have to request for leave,” I said automatically, not taking the time to think about what I was saying.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Leave?” He laughed a bit, a nervous laugh. “You hardly work as it is, Luke!”

“Something’s come up,” I responded evenly, not betraying how difficult it was for me to abandoned Alfie like this, without so much as a heads up. “A job. A company, they want me to travel around and represent them. Biochemical stuff. Pharmaceuticals.” I sped my spiel up as saw the disbelief grow in his eyes. “It’s not forever. Just a short-lived thing. Every now and again. I’ll be back! And I’ll let you know the moment I’m back in London, eager to look at your corpses!”

Aflie was silent, shocked. Slowly he shook his head, mouth hanging open with unspoken words.

“Fine,” he finally said, exasperated, somewhat frustrated. “Take your leave. It’s fine.”

“Aflie…” Instant regret is always the worst feeling.

“No, I’m serious.” He pushed off the desk, scooping up a handful of case files and starting to thumb through them, glancing up at me with a glare. “Go on. Don’t want to miss out on your cool new job.”

And that was that. I grabbed my coat, throwing it on as I took the elevator down to the lobby, swiping out for the last time. I exited Scotland Yard into a drizzle of cold spring rain, shrugging my coat up around my neck to keep myself warm. As I sloshed down the puddle-drenched street, a figure joined me, coat up to their ears as well, flat cap covering their face.

“Hey Phineas,” I mumbled, not in the mood to talk.

“I’m curious. Did you just roll over and quit, or did you do something magnificently entertaining to get yourself fired?”

“A took a leave.” I responded dryly.

“Leave?” He looked at me sharply. “You don’t need to be taking _leave_ , Lucifer. You need to quit.”

“It’s fine,” I sighed strenuously. “Detective Inspector Anderson understood what was going on.”

After that, things began to change quite rapidly. I told Molly I was going to work when I went to the gym, trying to hone my skills learned back in high school. I was a nerd for all of three days, when some hot-shot thought it would be fun to knock my books from my arms. I can’t remember if he ever came back to school after getting out of the hospital. All I remember is no one would so much as look at me from then on out. I hadn’t a single enemy. Nor a single friend. But it was obvious from by slowly-healing split lip and shadow of a lingering black eye that I had a lot of work to do.

I met with Phineas many times in that last week. Sometimes, he would just show up, at the gym, at restaurants, at cafés, at my apartment. He never had anything of value to say, just a prepared string of taunts and his endless list of disappointing expectations for my performance in the field. I was hardly one to talk to, really. All I could think about was the fact that I had to tell Molly that I was leaving, for who knows how long. And I had no idea how to even beginning to do it.

And then, before I knew it, Ashley May was there. Out of the blue, no warning. One moment I was drinking coffee alone, and the next I had a date.

“It’s time,” she said causally, as if discussing the piss poor weather. “You have exactly one hour. In one hour, you are to hail a taxi cab outside this café and tell the driver—these words exactly—to take you to the country for some fresh air. I’ll see you then.”

She got up, gave me a huge smile, and leaned down to kiss my cheek. “Bye babe. See you after work.” And with that, she was gone.

There were so many ways I could have used that hour. So many _better_ ways than the one I went for. I just went home, I packed a few things—toothbrush, framed picture of seven year old me with my dad and Grandpa Sherlock, some clothes. I didn’t notice Molly Hooper watching me until she spoke up, sounding absolutely heartbroken.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

I froze, turning to face her with the most agonized of expressions. “Molly it’s not-… I-…”

She shook her head, walking over and pulling me into a hug, top of her head just barely reaching my shoulder.

“Be safe,” she warned, voice muffled by my shirt. “Don’t forget to use that smart head of yours. And most of all, know that I’ll always be here for you should you need me.”

I lost it. I cried. But I didn’t care. I cried shamelessly, tears spilling down my face, body shaking as I hugged my surrogate mother tighter.

“You did everything for me, Molly Hooper,” I managed between trembling sobs. “I can’t ever thank you enough.”

She pulled away just enough to cup my face in her hands, her face stained with tears. “Smile.”

I laughed a bit, a smile coming to my face before a sob took it away. She smiled at me.

“Just seeing you happy is more thanks than I’ll ever need.”

I hugged her again, breathing deeply to calm myself down. Humphrey had wandered in, rubbing up against my ankles. I bent down and scooped him up, smiling as he rubbed his head into my cheek.

“Bye Humphrey. I’ll see you later, alright mate?”

He purred as I set him down. Molly flashed one last teary smile before leaving me to finish packing. Humphrey sat and watched me a while, but soon grew bored, wandering off to get into trouble. I zipped up my duffel bag, a feeling of cold finality coming over me. This was it. The contents of that duffel bag were about to become all that was left of my life in London. But it was hard to be too sad knowing what awaited me beyond the U.K. boarders.

It was still raining when I stood outside the café, hailing a cab. One pulled to the curb, windshield wipers working lazily as the tires cut through the muddy puddle collecting at the side of the road. I hopped in the cab, ruffling my hair as to dislodge some of the dampness.

“Where to?” The cabbie asked, unfriendly.

I sighed. “Take me to the country. You know, for some fresh air.”

The cabbie eyed me in the rearview mirror, clearly checking to be sure I was the package he was waiting for. Satisfied, he merged back into traffic.

“As you say, Mr. Holmes.”


	10. Chapter 10

Next thing I knew, I was waking up in Mycroft’s office at the Clandestine Syndicate headquarters. As expected, Mycroft was there, working diligently at his desk. He didn’t even glance at me, simply instructing me to go shower and put on some new clothes provided by the CS. And so I did. Thankfully, Ashley May found me before I wandered too far, helping me navigate the hallways to the barracks and living quarters, a large, hexagonal room filled with a combination of lounge pieces and gym equipment. Big metal doors dotted each wall, except for one wall that was a large hallway leading into a similar, smaller hexagonal room. I leaned to peer in, spotting beds.

“The Honeycomb, we call it.” Ashley smiled, referring to the room around us. “It’s where all our new members live and train, as well as where the curriers and other HQ-based operatives live and where our visiting members stay while they’re here.” She motioned to one of the doors. “Through there you’ll find our collective wardrobe. Anything you might need—workout clothes, casual wear, disguises, tactical equipment—it’s all kept in there. Go grab yourself a change of clothes and head to the door on the wall to the left of that: the showers.”

“Thanks bangs.” I grinned, giving her a sideways glance.

“Yeah, any time curls.” She smiled coyly. “I’ll see you back in Mycroft’s office when you’re done.” She raised her eyebrows in a look of mock-concern. “You know how to get there, right?”

I snorted at the ridiculousness of the notion. “Of course I do!”

She giggled, backing towards the glass door we had entered through. “Good. Try not to drop the soap.”

She laughed at my suddenly stunned face, winking before turning and walking out. I sighed, shaking my head, a fond smile creeping onto my face at the lingering thought of her as I walked for the door to the wardrobe. I looked around the room in awe, which was filled with rows upon rows of shelves, with outfits in neatly folded stacks filling them up. There were hanging signs above each aisle of clothing, expressing what content could be found there.

“Funny, isn’t it?” A guy said as he walked out of an aisle and made for the door, where I stood gawking. “I swear the guy who designed it must have been one heck of a grocery store fan.”

This guy was handsome as hell, with a chiseled jaw, roguish smile, perfect amount of stubble, and messy brown hair with just enough curl in it to make messy look stylish. He had a thick accent that keyed in to his Croatian upbringing.

“Srećko,” he said as he shifted his haul of clothes to one arm, offering his now free hand. “My name’s Srećko, Prime Minister of Romania.”

I shook his hand, a little shocked. “Prime Minister?”

He grinned. “Yeah. And before that, President of the Senate. Before that, well, a political nobody with the charisma and backing power to launch me to the top. And you are?”

“Uh, Lucifer,” I answered as our handshake came to a close. “Lucifer Holmes. I’m coming in as a part-time field team member, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Holmes?” He sounded impressed. “That’s excellent. We’ve had a many great Holmes help to build up our organization.”

“Did you know any of them?” I asked anxiously.

He shrugged. “Not personally. I know Mycroft is one of our Patrons, and my Patron Hugo talks about a Daniel Holmes all the time.”

My heart skipped a beat at the mere mention of my father’s name; one of his names, at least. He went by Jay—Jay Moriarty—for the majority of his life, at least the part before I came along. Once I was born, he struggled with it, but he tried to be called Daniel Holmes. He told me it was his birth name: Daniel William Adler-Holmes. I was already aware he had some role in the CS from what Subject Zero had mentioned, but hearing his name brought up again… I couldn’t sit around and pretend I didn’t want to know everything anyone knew about him.

“It was good meeting you, Lucifer,” Srećko smiled. “If you spot my wife—blonde, blue eyes, best smile I’ve ever seen—try not to get dragged into a conversation. She’s so used to droning on with the other political wives that sometimes she forgets others receive damage to their intellect from such monotonous talks.” He laughed a bit as he waved goodbye and left out the door, leaving me to wander and find some clothes.

I didn’t run into anyone else as I grabbed a textured dry-fit shirt and black athletic pants from off the shelves, heading directly for the shower room, walking in to find two guys conversing by the door, one very tan Hispanic with a windswept mess of curly hair falling over his ears and eyes, a dark beard growing in, and mesmerizingly intense dark eyes, the other a man of Asian descent with overgrown spikey black hair still wet to his head, and sparkling dark eyes. The both looked over as I walked in, smiling in greeting.

“ _Hola amigo_ ,” The first greeted, both his thumbs hooked into his cargo shorts that sat low on his waist, exposing the rim of his boxers; he was shirtless, of course, still damp from the showers and incredibly well built. “And who might you be?”

“Lucifer. Lucifer Holmes.” I answered, unfazed by the ridiculous amount of charm in his smile.

“Kin of Mycroft’s?” The second guy asked, his Japanese accent subtle but unmistakable.

I nodded. “His nephew. Well, great nephew.”

“ _Excelente_!” The first laughed. “Welcome to the team, _amigo_. My name’s Juan Pablo, son of Juan Pablo, grandson of Juan Pablo. But just call me Pablo. I’m Celebrity status, if you were wondering.”

“And I’m Aito. Aito Kobayashi. Journalism.”

“I’m on the Field team,” I replied, shaking both their hands as they were offered to me.

“Really?” Aito asked in his quiet, peaceful voice. “Where you headed?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been briefed yet. I’m supposed to shower and change first.”

“ _Si_ , standard procedure,” Pablo nodded sagely. “Check the clothes and possessions for any tracking equipment or recording devices.”

“Really?” I said, surprised.

“Oh yeah,” Pablo said as he stretched. “The minute you step into that shower, they go through everything to make sure you’re not about to compromise our operation.”

But don’t feel bad,” Aito added calmly. “They do it to everyone each time they visit HQ. Pablo and I just went through it. And like clockwork, our missing clothes will show back up before we leave.”

“You best shower, _amigo_ ,” Pablo clapped me on the back as he headed for the door, pulling his shirt over his head. “Don’t want to take _too_ long and get the other members gossiping about what in the world could have occupied your time in the showers.” He winked. “Especially having me in here.”

I watched as Pablo left the room, a blush stinging my cheeks. I caught Aito looking at me, smiling a bit.

“Don’t worry. I dispel rumors with nothing more than a nod. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Lucifer. As far as I’m concern, you’re on my good side.”

With that, I headed to the actual showers and cleaned myself up, spending extra time sitting under the warm water. I had no idea where I was to be sent, and when I would get to have a nice hot shower again. When I finished, I changed into my new clothes—noting that my old clothes had indeed been taken—and headed back to Mycroft’s office.

“Lucifer,” he greeted, motioning to a chair across from his desk. “Please.”

I sat myself down, launching right into the question that was on my mind. “Uncle Mycroft, I’ve met so many damn agents I can barely keep them all straight. How do you do it?”

Mycroft folded his hands on the desk, leaning forward a bit. “We _are_ a global organization, Lucifer. So it’s to be expected we have a fairly sizable number of agents. Fortunately, the responsibility of handling all those agents is split up among five. We’re called Patrons, or Matrons for the lovely women. I’m one of them. I’m in charge of all Western Europe affairs and the North American ones as well. Eastern Europe and Russia are under the care of my colleague and good friend Hugo Lukska. The East and Southeast Asia are in the more-than-capable hands of the graceful Pema Gyatso. The Middle East and Africa fall to the young but brilliant Jamal Ali, and last but not least Central and South America are entrusted to another young and brilliant man, Ignacio Cruz. They’ll all be here for the triennial meeting that’s coming up. You’ll get to meet them then, I’m sure.”

“So which agents are yours?” I tilted my head a bit, curious.

“Use your head, Lucifer,” Mycroft shook his. “Which ones have you met? The German twins, Phineas Sinclair… Ashley May is technically under my jurisdiction.”

“The Russian Assassins..?”

“That would be Hugo’s agents.”

“What about-?”

“Lucifer, I need you to focus for a minute.” Mycroft sighed in annoyance. “I’m briefing you on your first mission as part of the Clandestine Syndicate Field Team.”

“Who has jurisdiction over the field team?”

Mycroft grew further annoyed with me. “No one, Lucifer. The field team is a collective operation that all Patrons and Matrons collaborate on to maintain the safety and efficiency of _all_ our members. So shape up! I simply cannot have you embarrassing me and my decision to bring you in with your unprofessional behavior.”

I grew quiet and attentive. Mycroft eyed me darkly for a minute or two before continuing on with his briefing. I listened as he discussed flying myself and Subject Zero into a small village outside of Moscow and staying with a Mentor there—a Mentor being a member whose sole operative is to raise kids for the CS. Mycroft said there was another field agent, one of the best, that needed a few extra hands in a minor affair. Subject Zero and I were to be those extra hands.

It wasn’t long before I found myself wondering where my partner could be. I spent some time in The Honeycomb, talking with other members, spending time with Ashley May, goofing around. But the question wouldn’t stop nagging me: where was Subject Zero? I managed to slip away from everyone as the day grew late, and with the ID badge I had pickpocketed from my uncle, I made my way into the elevator and down to the subterranean laboratory where I had first met the kid. I mostly didn’t expect him to be there. He was to be out in the field the next day, as it were. Surely he was already assimilated into his role as a fully-fledged member? But, as the last set of glass doors in the laboratory hallway slid open, I felt my stomach sink at the sight of the puppy-faced experiment, throwing hits at a punching bag. His head turned, big brown eyes spotting me, a smile that was now missing a top incisor flashing my way.

“Luke!” He dropped everything to offer up a handshake where I stood glued by the door. “Great to see you again!”

“No hard feelings…?” I managed dully.

His smile just grew brighter. “No, not at all.” It dropped away as he grew serious. “I get it. It was a dick move for me to mention your relatives and then not tell you the first thing about what I knew… I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” I replied, apologetic. “Really, I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that. We’re gonna be working in the field together. Undercover. Espionage. Back to back under a hail of enemy fire. I can’t be whaling on you every time you piss me off unintentionally.” I smiled a bit. “Because something tells me that’ll be far too often.”

“So they finally gave us a mission?” He was practically bouncing with excitement. “Well go on! Tell me! What is it?”

“I’ll tell you,” I began, borrowing the bandages sitting out to wrap my hands. “But first, we’ve got to do some training. You don’t fool me with that boxing shit. You and I both know all you do is play video games.”

Charles put up his hands in a boxer’s fighting stance, smiling good-naturedly. “Oh, you think so?”

I took a similar stance easily, smiling smugly. “Prove me wrong, squirt.”

The two of us took to a friendly round of sparing. We took some jabs at each other that were avoidable with some quick reflexes. When we tired of the fast-paced one-on-one, we turned instead to taking turns holding up pads as targets for the other to punch and kick. After a while, I bolded up enough to start asking questions.

“So Charles…”

He threw a roundhouse kick into my padded hand. “Come on mate, just call me Charlie.”

“Alright, Charlie,” I corrected. “Tell me: what are you still doing down here in this dingy old lab? Why aren’t you staying with the other agents?”

There was something close to a reluctance that came over him, tensed his stance, dampened his mood. “Oh you know,” he shrugged, throwing a half-hearted punch. “I’m supposed to be a big surprise. So I can’t go and let the cat out of the bag. The cat being me, and the bag being the lab, of course….”

I dropped my hands. “Mycroft told you that, didn’t he?”

Charlie’s silence spoke for itself. I felt something close to anger bubbling up inside me.

“You’re not some sort of weapon, o-or new and improved schedule, or anything like that! You’re a _person_ , Charlie!” I paused, mind racing. “Just how long _have_ you been stuck down here?”

He shrugged again, dropping his gaze. For a guy so utterly chipper and energetic, he was hardly recognizable as he stood in front of me then.

“How long?” I pressed stubbornly, dreading the answer.

“Fifteen…” I heard him mumble. “I’ve been here since I was fifteen. Mycroft, he lets me visit Anthea and Ashley May for the holidays. Except this year. This year, he tells me I have to keep training. I have to keep perfecting my gifts so that I blow away the Patrons and Matrons at the triennial conference…”

“That’s it,” I snapped, ripping the pads from my hands, Charlie eyeing me uncertainly. “Come on Charlie.” I headed for the door, furious.

“Where are you going?” He asked, still sounding utterly disheartened.

“No, _we_ are going to Russia. Come _on_ Charlie! I’m breaking you out. It’s damn well time you and I take the field team by storm!”

The immediate change to his everything—expression, posture, mood—was enough to cause a smile to break through my anger.

“I’ll pack my things!” He chimed excitedly, running to one of the labs to pack.

And so I waited, determined to do whatever it took to improve the poor kid’s quality of life. My blood still boiled with anger towards Mycroft, for treating this wonderful kid like some sort of lab rat. I thought back to all the time we had talked about him. Not once had Mycroft referred to Charlie by name. It was always “Subject Zero.” It made me think back to something Phineas had told me, about growing up, groomed from childhood to be a politician, about how the fear of slipping up haunted him day and night. Suddenly, the shine of the CS was wearing off, revealing an ugly interior.

And little did I know that the more I learned, the uglier it would all get.


	11. Chapter 11

_“Sounds to me like you we headed for Mycroft’s bad side.”_

_“Yeah. I was.”_

_“When did that happen?”_

_“Oh, he knew. He knew the moment I came up from the lab, maybe even sooner, just how pissed I was…”_

____________________________

He found us in The Honeycomb. Ashley May helped Charlie and I pack in CS-approved duffle bags in the wardrobe.

“They’re super flammable,” she remarked off-handedly. “You’re supposed to keep everything in here. And if you end up compromised, you set the bag on fire. We don’t risk exposure.”

I was shoving several outfits from the shelves into my bag, Charlie wandering through the aisles of clothes, his mind somewhere else. Mycroft came in, his face more stony than usual. The moment I saw him, the disgust and anger returned to my eyes.

“Lucifer. A moment of your time.” He turned and walked out. I followed.

“You’re upset,” he stated plainly.

“You can’t keep Charlie locked up like some sort of experiment!!”

“Subject Zero _is_ an experiment.”

“He’s a _person_ , Mycroft!” I snapped.

Mycroft sniffed in distaste. “You sound like Sherlock when you’re angry.” He eyed me coldly. “Did you know that?”

I went silent, heart aching to think of my wonderfully caring grandfather, my devoted father…

“What happened to them?” I demanded coldly.

“Sherlock didn’t approve of the project either. But it wasn’t his choice to make.”

“ _Mycroft_!!”

He looked to me, eyes like ice. “You’d do well to keep your mouth shut and your head down until someone greater than yourself decides you’re worth something. Because until then, dear Lucifer, you’re about as disposable as it gets.” He looked around. “This isn’t Scotland Yard, nephew. When you piss people off here, you’re not pissing off policemen. You’re pissing off the most powerful men and women in the history of the world.”

I stood in silence, stubbornly angry, glaring, but admittedly his words were starting to sink in.

Mycroft eyed me in feigned interest. “Did your little pal Phineas ever talk about his parents? One letter, a single piece of misplaced mail, and they were killed for treason.”

He turned, walking past me on his way back to his office, pausing a moment at my side. “Do your job, and do it right. Because with that mouth of yours, you’re going to need one hell of a standing in this organization to stick around for very long.”

I watched him walk away, his words weighing on me, putting quite a damper on my initial enthusiasm for my new life. I remember asking myself what I had gotten myself into when Charlie was suddenly at my side, flat cap worn backwards, changed into an oversized sweatshirt and skinny jeans, a lollipop held in his cheek. He held one out to me.

“Lollipop?” He offered quietly. “The nice lady stocking the shelves had a stash of them.”

I took it absentmindedly, tucking it into my cheek. “Ready to go, Charlie?”

“Only if you are,” he answered, his concern suddenly clear as day to me.

I turned to him and put on a smile. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Within the hour, we were in the air, jetting through European airspace, just me and Charlie and Ashley May. I was silent, knees drawn up to my chest as I stared out the window at the herds of clouds passing by, breathing deeply off a cigarette Ashley had nagged me to put out. Charlie and Ashley sat across the aisle, Charlie munching on a sandwich, the both of them eyeing me with worry.

“Luke,” Ashley began tentatively. “I’m going to brief you two on the mission. You ready..?”

“Yeah,” I answered a bit more bitterly than I would have liked.

There was a silence, where I should have placed my apology, but I did nothing. Ashley continued.

“We’re going to land in Moscow. While we head for our cab, we’re to maintain the front of business partners. No excess gawking. No hand holding. No pouting—Luke, I’m looking at you.”

“I’m not pouting,” I shot back defensively.

“I didn’t say you were. Just don’t be while we’re in the airport.”

I grumbled to myself about the ridiculous of the notion that I would, but Ashley continued over me.

“Our cabbie should be loitering around the airport for our arrival. I’ll flag him down for you guys. We’ll take the cab outside of Moscow to a house out in the countryside. It will be your home base during this operation. You’ll be staying with one of our Mentors, and your temporary partner will meet you there within the day.”

“Who is it?” Charlie asked curiously.

“Bernadette Koskov,” Ashley May grinned.

“Oh wow!” Charlie breathed, sandwich forgotten.

Needless to say, my attention was piqued. I turned to them, confused. “Who’s Bernadette Koskov?”

“Literally the best.” Charlie shook his head in wonder.

“She’s our top field operative.” Ashley elaborated. “She’s done jobs from Monte Carlo to Bangladesh, from Vegas to San Paulo. If anyone ever has a sensitive job, they lobby to have Bernadette Koskov in the middle of it all.”

“Then what’s she doing in some little shack outside of Moscow? And looking for the help of amateurs, at that?”

“It does sound a little strange,” Charlie agreed timidly.

“The Mentor you’re meeting with? He’s the one who raised her. Whenever she’s not busy on a job, she’s there. I assume you’ll met there, get briefed, and then head out to the location of the job. What she needs you two for, I can only imagine.”

“What if it’s a suicide mission?” I asked, worried.

“Hope you’re good at running,” Charlie joked.

“Don’t have to be,” I jeered. “I just have to trip _you_.”

____________________________

_“Bernadette Koskov… I don’t believe we’ve confirmed her yet. Is that where she’d be? Just outside of Moscow?”_

_“You’ll never find her,” Lucifer spat. “She’s far too clever for your scum to track down.”_

_“Now now Lucifer,” he sighed. “Have a little faith. But please, do continue. Anything eventful happen between landing and arriving at this house you mentioned?”_

_“Not really…”_

____________________________

We spent very little time in the actual city of Moscow. The moment we landed, Ashley May was pushing to get our cab and get out of the city as fast as we could. She was worried about RUSE, as Moscow was their biggest area of influence. The place was breathtaking, and I could tell by Charlie’s gaping mouth as he stared out the cab window he had never been in a city so large and bustling and colorful before. I couldn’t blame him. Compared to the sights and greys of London, Moscow was whole different beast.

The cab drove us out of the bustle of Moscow, but the cabbie informed Ashley in Russian that he couldn’t take us to our final location.

“We can only get there by train,” Ashley told us tersely as she struggled to keep from worrying.

We were driven to the least popular of the train stations that could get us to our location. I purchased our tickets as Ashley May and the cabbie hammered out the details one last time. We waited for no more than a minute before our train rolled into the station. We hopped on to find ourselves practically the only ones riding. We huddled around a table, keeping our voices low as Ashley gave us the rundown.

“So here’s the deal,” she said, her stress evident in her tone. “You two aren’t riding this train all the way to the next station.”

“We’re not..?” Charlie asked, baffled.

Ashley May shook her head. “Precisely thirty-four minutes into the ride, the two of you need to jump.”

“Jump,” I repeated disbelievingly.

“Yes, jump.” Ashley reaffirmed with an apologetic sigh. “From the bathroom stall car, at the back of the train. You’ll see the house; we’ll be passing fairly close to it. You two need to jump in order to get there. And try not to kill yourselves in the process, okay?”

“Are you not coming?” Charlie sounded nervous.

“No, I’m riding this to the next stop. Our cabbie is meeting me there to take me back to the plane, and then I’m gone.”

“But what if something goes wrong?” I said, worried. “For you, I mean.”

She smiled at me. “I’m a professional, curls. I know how to stay under the radar while I get my people in and out of their locations. You can’t be worrying about me when your amateur-ass has to jump off a moving train.”

“Fair enough,” I sighed reluctantly.

And so we sat on the train, awaiting the time for Charlie and I to bail. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t all sorts of nervous. I could look over at Charlie and I wasn’t able to read him to save my life. His expression was totally placid, not a hint of fear nor excitement on it.

“Five more minutes,” he spoke up, voice incredibly even.

“You two should head back to the restroom car now,” Ashley said, looking to us both. “Good luck.”

We both got up, Charlie heading for the car door first, Ashley grabbing my arm as I went to follow. I looked at her, reading the urgency in her eyes and leaning in.

“What’s wrong?”

She pressed something into my hand. “This part’s never fun, but-…. If it should come to it-… if you end up compromised…”

I understood, pocketing the pills she handed me. “I get it. Thanks bangs.” I flashed her a reassuring smile. She gave me one back.

As I turned away from her, the smile disappeared. The weight of my new job came crushing down on me once more, and once more I wished for simpler times. But there was no time to be regretting my decisions. I had a train to jump off of.

I exited the passenger car, finding Charlie waiting between cars for me, the wind tugging at our clothes and causing us to yell just to hear each other.

“What took you so long?” He yelled.

“It’s nothing. Let’s go!” I answered, shoving him into the next car as I followed behind.

“Three minutes!” Charlie chimed nervously as we picked up the pace, moving as quickly as we could through one car and making the terrifying cross to the next.

We were practically running when Charlie threw open the next door, entire body going ridged as he realized there wasn’t another car to go to. I panicked, grabbing him by his sweatshirt and yanking him back into the car, the door hanging open and smacking against the car in the intense wind.

“We have to jump!” Charlie panicked, looking at his watch.

I braced myself against the door frame and leaned out, spotting a ramshackle house as it sped past the train and quickly began to recede into the distance. I turned to Charlie, completely flustered.

“Come on!!” I screamed, not wasting another second as I planted my foot on the edge of the door and launched myself from the train.

I didn’t have time to see if Charlie had followed suit. There was a brief, stomach-churning moment where I was airborne, floating, and then I bit the dust. Hitting the ground knocked the breath from my lungs and bruised countless appendages as I tumbled gracelessly down the overgrown grassy hill away from the train tracks. And when I finally stopped rolling, I didn’t move. I _couldn’t_ move. My face was buried in the dirt, a groan escaping me. Everything was whirling around, even with nothing to see and my eyes shut tight.

I honestly have no clue how long I just laid there, mentally unaware of the rest of me, of my injuries other than an overall throbbing. I had the presence of mind to worry about whether or not Charlie had made it, but I hadn’t the physical control to do something about it. Once the train was gone, there was a silence that permeated everything, accompanied by the chirp of insects and the quiet rustle of the leaves, having been disturbed by the lingering gust caused by the train. Then there were footsteps, quiet, deliberate, sweeping across the grass. Then something rolled me onto my back. My eyes shut at the sudden onslaught of sunlight, and slowly cracked back open, staring into an aging unshaven face, smiling like a mischievous teen.

“It’s good to see you Lucifer,” he laughed. “Been keeping in trouble I hope?”


	12. Chapter 12

_“Who was it that found you?”_

_“My Uncle Chuck.”_

____________________________

You see, I hadn’t seen my Uncle Chuck in nearly fourteen years at that point. Last any of us had heard of him, he was on a secret mission with his boyfriend and my uncle Valentin, in Russia, when things went south. Valentin was captured, tried for espionage, and executed. We never heard anything else on the matter, and so I guess we just assumed the worst for Charlie King—Uncle Chuck—as well. But as fate would have it, he had been in Russia this whole time, and, according for Mycroft and Ashley May, had been raising kids for the Clandestine Syndicate.

He helped me inside, gave me a blanket, and went back out to fetch Charlie, who had wound up unconscious after his jump from the train. We laid him down on a beat up old couch, covered him with a thick woolen blanket, and my uncle went about fixing us two some tea. We sat across from one another at his small cabin-style table, and I could barely contain all my questions. For one, I could hardly stop staring at him. He was so different than he used to be—older, more tired, grey peppering his stubble and his wily dark hair—and yet so similar, with his sparkling mischievous eyes and easy smile.

“What happened…?” I asked, fully ecstatic and baffled that he was still alive.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he countered, though smiling hugely, clearly as elated to see me as I was him.

“You first,” I said, curling up around my mug of tea, shivering from cold Russian evening that was beginning to creep into the house.

My Uncle Chuck sighed, his good mood spoiled as he turned to his memories, staring into his mug as he began. “I’ve been a member of the CS my whole life. My parents, the Kings, they were members too: American billionaires with their fingers in countless political pies. So it was obvious when they raised me under the CS doctrine that I would grow up to be a member myself. I did some small jobs around the US while under the command of our previous American-European Matron. She grew gravely ill near the end there—apparent poisoning—so Mycroft proceeded her as Patron while still maintaining his position in the British Government. His first order to me was to travel to Africa, and meet up with this other kid who was just sort of traveling around aimlessly. My objective was to get close with him and convince him to join the CS. So I went. And that’s when I met your Uncle Valentin. We became friends, and eventually lovers. It’s all so much of a happy blur, really, I don’t quite recall when we were anything less than hopelessly in love; maybe we just always were.

“Then the time came that Valentin decided to return to London, to see his family and friends again. Of course, I tagged along with him. I met the Watson’s, I met James, and your father Jay. I was living an absolute dream, keeping close to Valentin as my _assignment_ , when I could have been keeping tabs on some Wall Street pig instead. But then, it wasn’t _all_ I was assigned to do. I had to get him to join the CS. At some point, Mycroft met up with the two of us and invited us to join his little field team of spies. Valentin accepted, and I pretended to accept as well—I was already a member, as it were. And suddenly, the two of us were working in the field, doing jobs for the CS, and doing it together. It was a whole other dream come true. But I started to think…. I really loved what we had back in London: the quiet life, just me and him, as domestic as it gets. And I loved you, Lucifer. Seeing you grow up and spending time with you, it made me want kids of my own, you know? Just me and Valentin and a kid or two. To me, after so many missions in the field, after so many times of nearly losing Valentin, that life seemed like heaven on earth.

“But then our big job came around. A huge ordeal of undercover work and espionage. We had to work months just to get into Russia the right way—and if I’m being honest with myself, I was wishing it wouldn’t work out, that we’d never get in. But we did. And so we infiltrated RUSE. We sent intel back to the CS, really helped solidify our standing in Russia. We were months more into the job, and I had been working up the nerve for weeks to ask Valentin to marry me. I wanted our safe little life back in London more than anything the longer we stayed undercover in Russia. But the day I decided I would finally propose was the day everything went south. Our cover was blown. In a mad flurry of bullets and smoke and fists and pitch black night, I managed to slip free of the angered RUSE agents. I waited at our safe house—this house—for hours, waiting for Valentin to drag himself through the door. I remember I was fiddling nervously with the engagement ring, ready to shove it on his finger as I patched him up and kissed him better again. But he never came through the door. The next day I went back out to where we had been ambushed to find that RUSE bunker had been annihilated, become nothing more than smoking bomb-wrecked ruins. And there was no sign of Valentin.

“I searched for days on end without so much as stopping to rest or eat. And I remember I was dragging myself through a little town, when the daily paper caught my eye. _Man Arrested For Espionage Against Russia_ , it read, with a grainy, blurry photograph of Valentin being hauled to jail beneath. It felt like someone had physically kicked me in the stomach and ripped the heart right out of my chest. I returned to our safe house and started frantically making calls, trying to enlist the help of the CS to free Valentin, or have our people in Russia pull some strings to have him released, or at least bribe some officials on his behalf. But no help was forthcoming. The CS refused to endanger the standing of their Russian members—the ones that Valentin and I had worked so hard to place them in their positions of power—to rescue a single part-time member, as was Valentin’s standing. They did, however, allow me to stay in Russia while the Patrons and Matrons considered the matter more carefully.

“So I just sat there. I sat in this house, waiting for some sort of miracle, knowing that there wouldn’t be one. I started receiving letters from the jail, letters from Valentin. They were so cheery at first, full of promises of love when he returned to me, so optimistic that he wasn’t doomed to die in some Russian prison. Then, the letters become more somber, less light hearted promises and more serious affirmations of his love for me. And then the last couple were filled with nothing but what to do in his absence, and all the stuff he wanted to say to me before he died. The last letter was just a simple request for me to be happy, and to remember him fondly. I was in some sort of numb shock, waiting for another letter, until the official report came out stating the execution of the espionage traitor, with Valentin’s scared face accompanying the headline. I didn’t even feel real anymore, like I just sort of existed, out of place, pointless, meaningless. But I mustered up the energy to bride the prison cremator for his body, which I took back here and buried out in the meadow. In the springtime, it sprouts all sorts of resilient little flowers that grow despite the persisting cold, just like Valentin’s spirit always persisted through the horrors that ravaged his life. He loved those flowers. They made him smile.

“And in his absence, I did a whole lot of reflecting, while sitting out in that meadow, shivering as I provided my love with some company though we were a world apart. I thought about Valentin’s childhood, which he had disclosed to me bit by bit the closer we became. He was born to a prostitute, who was found dead while Valentin was still a tiny little thing. He was dumped in a terrible orphanage with no funding whatsoever, and later abandoned that living hell to a life on the streets the moment he could stumble away. If slowly starving and freezing to death wasn’t bad enough, he got caught up in a RUSE-backed gang that hired street kids like him to guard their outposts and act like canaries; if someone tried to attack their outpost, they’d have to shoot the kids first, revealing their location and tipping off the gang members to the pending attack. They roped the kids in by providing them with ample amounts of heroin, numbing them to the pain of their hunger and the freezing temperatures while ramping up their sense of well-being. The poor kids quickly became addicted, and thus couldn’t walk away from the deadly operation, needing their fix. Valentin eventually just ran for it, having to fight through withdrawal that left him incapacitated and nearly killed him. Afterwards, he found himself taken in by a circus—and a friendly one, thank goodness—and ended up really enjoying life for once, learning quite a bit of acrobatics and growing close with the circus folk. But then they went bankrupt, and split up, and Valentin was alone again until his father Moriarty pulled him out of Russia to use in his own twisted scheme.

“You can’t know all that Valentin went through, knowing how smiley and cheerful and optimistic he was, and not be amazed at his resilience. And you can’t think about all he went through without thinking about all the children in similar situations that weren’t so lucky. So when I received the call from CS with details on my extraction from Russia, I politely declined and requested a reassignment to the role of Mentor, someone who lives like a local and raises kids, orphans, with exceptional intelligence and talent to be future CS members. Having been a born and bred CS member myself, my request was immediately granted. And so I stayed here, in the safe house. And I travelled around, hunting for kids in dire situations like Valentin had been in, rescuing them from malicious orphanages and plucking them from off the streets and taking the sick and addicted in to raise them back to health. Most kids never made the cut to be CS members, but I helped them all the same. The rules of being a Mentor state that you can house a kid for up to a year to provide ample time to test their aptitude for being a member, after which time a kid has to either be let go if they don’t meet the requirements, or tests provided by the Patrons and Matrons deciding if the child shall be deemed a future member, and allowed to remain in the care of guidance of the Mentor. So that’s what happened to me. I stayed put to help out kids like Valentin had been. It’s what he would have wanted, I’m sure of it.”

“Our currier said that you mentored these two guys I met, Vsevolod and Jaeger…”

Uncle Chuck smiled. “Wonderful boys, in their own ways. Vsevolod reminded me so much of Valentin… always smiling, always making light of his problems and pains, chatting his way out of every bad situation. And Jaeger, so quiet, so alone, having suffered so much for a boy so little, enduring it all without complaint... You wouldn’t think the two of them would be as inseparable a duo as they turned out to be, but there’s something so undeniably right in the charismatic finding solace in the soft-spoken, in the damaged seeking the company of the light-hearted. Not to mention they complement each other in the field like no other. What Vsevolod can’t schmooze his way through, Jaeger can roll up his sleeves and muscle his way through. When Jaeger’s primitive methods find him trapped, Vsevolod can small talk the two of them right out of the corner.”

“And Bernadette..?” I ventured.

“You mean the agent meeting you two here?” He smiled. “Don’t you dare tell her I said it, but she’s the sweetest girl you’ll ever meet. She might not seem it, under all her field operative training and uncanny identity fluidity, but when I met her she was trying to sell passer-byers flowers she had picked; she couldn’t have been more than five years old, beautiful blonde hair tangled and pink sundress torn and ruined. I bought a flower off of her and asked what she would use the money for, expecting to hear it was to buy her supper or to help a sick mother or father. But you know what she said? The money was to help feed the little boys and girls who were too afraid to go out and try to make money for themselves. I asked her to show me, and she took me to an alley where a handful of emancipated toddlers lay huddled together, dirty and freezing. Needless to say I took them all home, toddlers and Bernadette alike. I fed them, clothed them, saw to their education for the year I was allowed free reign over my inductees. When the time came for test results, only Bernadette made the cut, but I’m happy to say I got the other kids to a well-funded orphanage that worked closely with Europe and the US to find families for their orphans.”

My uncle took a long sip of his tea. “When she’s not busy being our number one field member, Bea is still that sweet little girl, her heart always set on helping others. She comes here, she comes home, and she can let her guard down, smile and laugh with me, joke around, be lazy—be herself, really. I can’t promise she’ll be like that when she shows tomorrow. She knows you two are going to be here, so most likely she’ll be on guard and strictly professional. But believe me when I say deep down she’s an angel.”

“So what about Vsevolod and Jaeger? Do they ever visit you?”

“Once in a blue moon, yeah,” Uncle Chuck shrugged. “Their line of work if much less structured than that of a field member. But every once and a while, if it’s looking like they’ll need to be in Moscow, they usually take the extra length to come out here and spend a night with me. It’s good for them, to be able to relax once and a while. To not have to be constantly worrying about their job and the doctrine and keeping up their loyalty to the CS.”

“But enough about _my_ life,” he eyed me playfully. “Tell me how my sweet little nephew Lucifer who was afraid to swing too high ends up doing field work for the infamous Clandestine Syndicate?”

“Well, in short, he grew up…”

And so the evening passed us by as I caught my uncle Charlie King back up on everything that had transpired in my life while he had been absent. I told him about my father’s disappearance, and the disappearances of both Sherlock and Mary Watson as well. I told him about my high school years, about my decent into an introverted and antisocial lifestyle. I told him briefly about how I went about receiving my Master’s degree in Biochemistry, and how I was unemployed and living with Molly Hooper until Mycroft stuck me in a job at Scotland Yard under Alfie Anderson’s authority. I elaborated about my meeting of Phineas Rutherford Sinclair, and how it all led to my involvement with the CS. I even went so far as to tell him about beating on Charlie Arthur Bennet Alistar for not telling me what he knew about my father and Sherlock, and how the two of us were assigned the job we were on. I conveniently left out the part about Charlie being a genetically perfected super-member who was to replace born and bred members in the generations to come. After all, that was Mycroft’s fat cat to let out of the bag.

“So…” My uncle asked, munching on some sweets he had pulled out of the cabinet. “Who is he?”

“Well…. um…” I began uncertainly.

“He isn’t one of those genetic mutant thingies they’ve been cooking up at HQ, is he?”

Uncle Chuck laughed at my shocked expression. “Oh come on now, Lucifer. It’s not _that_ big of a secret as old Mycroft would have you believe. Rumors get around. Besides, as a Mentor I get briefed on changes to protocol before the rest of our members even get word that change may or may not be coming.” He popped a candy into his cheek, gnawing at the hard exterior. “Plus…. Valentin might have heard a thing or two from Sherlock way back when about the subject… which he may or may not have told me about…”

“Then yeah,” I sighed, glancing over at Charlie who was still out cold on the couch. “He is.”

“So… what? Is he super strict to protocol and whatnot?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “He’s really excitable and naïve about a lot of things, but he knows ten times as much about the CS and its members than I do. He’s spent the majority of his life cooped up in a secluded lab like some sort of experiment, which explains a lot of the naivety….”

“The question that’s of the most importance to you, since the two of you are field partners, would be can you trust him? Because if you can’t… or if you aren’t sure… watch your back, Lucifer.”

“I mean, he hasn’t given me a reason _not_ to trust him…” I couldn’t keep the worry from my voice.

Uncle Chuck shrugged. “Just be careful is all. You never know when that tweaked genetic code of his is gonna end up buggy.”

I looked at Charlie again, suddenly beginning to wonder what I was doing partnered with him in the first place. I could have been paired with anyone, but Mycroft specifically put Charlie and I together. Why? Was it because he knew I’d be safe alongside his perfected operative? Or maybe because he knew he could trust me to report back to him about anything and everything Charlie did wrong. Or maybe still Mycroft didn’t want me knowing as much as I did, and Charlie was his hitman, programmed to get me far away from everyone and then kill me while we were in the middle of a job.

A part of me knew that these speculations were ridiculous, that Charlie and I were friends, and neither of us would do anything to hurt the other. Besides me wailing on the poor kid for no reason just that one time. But another part of me recognized the truth behind my uncle’s warning to withhold my trust, and to be perpetually suspicious. Either way, I was becoming exhausted quite rapidly as my long day of travel and train-jumping all caught up to me. Recognizing my fatigue, my uncle led me down the hall to a bedroom, and gave me extra blankets for the night.

“It’s gonna be a cold one,” he warned. “Get some sleep Lucifer. Once Bernadette gets here tomorrow, you won’t be getting much rest for a while.”

My head was still whirling with thoughts on Charlie, now coupling with curiosities about our upcoming mission with this Bernadette person. Despite the business of my brain, my eyes still persisted in drooping shut, and my body began to shut down for the night. Before I knew it, I was drifting off into the dark unknown of a deep sleep and a fast-approaching future.


	13. Chapter 13

_“Let’s get to Bernadette Koskov, and your mission with her, shall we?”_

_“Well it began early the next morning…”_

____________________________

I awoke to the sun piercing my eyes, breaking through the cracked, frosty glass of the bedroom window. With the sun rousing me to consciousness, I began to feel the deathly chill that had crept into the house. Unable to remain in bed and live, I forced myself out of bed, hugging the thick woolen blankets around me as I shuffled from the bedroom down the hall to where my uncle had lit a blazing fire in the living room we had talked the night before. Charlie was already huddled there, shivering intensely beneath a single cheap blanket, white-knuckled hands clamped around a steaming mug of tea. I sat beside him wordlessly, taking a mug of tea as my uncle came out of the kitchen to offer it to me. Charlie and I sat in silence, listening to the snapping and popping of the fire as it shifted and devoured the logs, the hiss of the bitter cold wind assailing the ramshackle house and seeping in through all the cracks and crevices.

I warmed up a bit, and with a heavy sigh removed one of my blankets from around me to toss onto Charlie, who gratefully tugged it around himself, still shaking like a leaf. Once I had finished off my tea, his shivering had all but subsided. I looked at him, his innocent face gaunt with exhaustion, a bit bruised and cut up from our tumble off the train.

“So we’re meeting this Bernadette Koskov today,” I said, my voice still thick from sleep.

Charlie immediately perked up, looking to me excitedly. “I know! I can’t wait! She’s literally a legend back at HQ!”

I smile crept onto my face at seeing him his normal optimistic self again, all of my doubts and suspicions from the night before melting beneath the warmth of Charlie’s company and companionship.

My Uncle Chuck left us at his house, telling us that he was headed into town to meet Bernadette. In his absence, Charlie was gawking at just about everything, his attention fixed on a collection of dusty picture frames above the fireplace. He was going on and on about the agents they pictured, and all the stories he’d heard about them, how he couldn’t believe how sweet some of the Assassins looked, or goofy some of the Politicians and Celebrities seemed. I listened to him for a little while, but I quickly tired of all the stories of assassinations and scandals and political strife. Because as it turned out, most of the cute kids whose pictures sat above the fireplace hadn’t lived for very long.

At some point in time, I wandered outside into the clearing that sat between the ramshackle house and the endless uninhabited wilderness, walking quietly—hands in my pockets—through the field of delicate white flowers. I was walking about for a while before I stopped, eyes glued mournfully onto a single small roughly-cut headstone. _Valentin Jamesovich Moriarty. May he bring as much joy in death as he did in life._ I wasn’t sure how long I just stood there, the cold turning me numb to the pain of the icy air. I thought about my Uncle Valentin, about all the stories my Uncle James had told be about their misadventures together with my father. He always stressed that Valentin was the happiest, gentlest, and most optimistic of them all. And here he was, cold in the ground. I didn’t need another reminder of just how unfair life was, but that’s what I got.

Charlie noticed my somber silence the moment I walked back into the house. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him about Valentin’s grave. He stood there in silence, and I could tell by the uncertainty in his eyes that there was something he was considering telling me.

“What?” I prompted, my desire to know fueled by an unnecessary anger.

“Your uncle, Valentin… I-… I met him once…”

I fixed Charlie with a look that could have killed him if it were at all possible. He caught the glance and immediately his eyes shot back down to the floor.

“He was so nice and smiley. And your uncle Charles, he was there too. And he would smile just catching a glance of Valentin’s smile. And when Valentin caught him smiling, Valentin would smile even brighter, though you thought he couldn’t possibly smile more. I had never seen two people become so happy from one another’s presence alone. I didn’t know much about love way back then… but I knew when I saw them _that_ just _had_ to be what love was like….”

My hostility left me in the form of a heavy sigh, leaving me feeling drained and depressed.

“Uncle Chuck and Uncle Valentin were a huge part of my world growing up,” I said, voice breaking. “Whenever I was feeling worthless, or abandoned, I just had to remember them, remember all the times we stayed up late making ice cream sundaes, building pillow forts, pretending to be a part of a circus…. The thing about it that made it all so special was that I _knew_ the two of them were very busy people. You could see it in their faces—dark eyes, heavy blinking, the yawns, the sluggishness—and the number of times they got calls, but not once did they choose work over spending time with me, no matter if we were fully investing in playing in the bubbles overflowing from the bathtub, or just sitting under a blanket, reading aloud a good book. That meant everything to me. I felt like I was their world, their everything. And for a kid disowned by his mother and abandoned by his father, passed house to house by friends, and friends of friends, being _that_ important to someone made all the difference.

“But then one day they left. Told me they had a big project for work they had to do, but that they’d call and write me, told me to be good for everyone and to keep up the mischief in their absence. I was sad, yeah, but I understood. But the days turned into weeks without word, and those weeks months. I’d hear a tidbit every now and again when the adults would talk, but nothing I really understood. And then one day Molly Hooper sat me down and told me they weren’t coming back. It broke my heart, to think they had left me. Because if they could afford to leave me behind, it meant I wasn’t important at all, or at least not nearly as much as I had thought. I went months before I learned they were presumably dead. And by that point my biggest focus was that my Grandpa Sherlock had up and disappeared in the night, and no one knew where he was, or if he was even alive. Our friends grieved, consoled one another, but no one more than Molly thought to comfort me through the loss. Just like no one had really given me much comforting when my dad left me for good. I guess they just assumed the abandonment was so obviously forthcoming that I would have been ready for it. How can you expect a little boy to be ready for his father, his hero, his whole world, to up and leave him alone?”

I hadn’t even noticed I was crying until Charlie pulled me into a hug, his own eyes threatening to overflow with tears. Mine streaked bitterly down my face, my lungs struggling to breathe through the sobs.

“He always said he’d be there for me, that’d one day we’d be together and be a happy family, like we both deserved…”

I couldn’t continue any further. I buried my face into Charlie’s shoulder and cried. If it wasn’t for his arms hugging me tight, my knees would have given out for sure. After a minute, Charlie led me over to the couch, and we sat down. I continued to cry, scrubbing at my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt, and Charlie sat somberly beside me, a shoulder to lean on, a friend to talk to, a hand to hold. But I took him up on none of these offers, preferring instead to block out the rest of the world as I scrambled to bottle up the hurt and the heartbreak once more. My crying subsided, and I wiped my face red, my eyes still glistening in their puffy sockets, staring blankly across the room as I completely ignored all that had just happened. I was ready to tell Charlie I didn’t want to talk about it when he was sure to ask if I did.

“I get it…” I said evenly, darkly. It wasn’t what I had been expecting, eyes still fixed ahead as he continued. “I wasn’t allowed to have a relationship with my father, no matter how much I may have wanted one…”

“You knew who your father was..?” I inquired skeptically, looking at him, taken aback by the level of distress and disgust that was there.

He nodded once. “Yeah. But I’d hardly call him a father. He always dismissed our relations, told me countless times that his genetic portion of my genome was simply a means to an end, and that after all the manipulation my genetics underwent, I was scientifically as related to him or my mother as any random stranger. He avoided all responsibility to me that way, writing it all off as just an experiment. It was like I wasn’t a real child, but some mutant creation of science. It was if he expected me to find guidance and companionship in the science that claimed my existence.”

“You’re not just an experiment, Charlie,” I snapped. “You’re a human being like anyone else. And you’re my partner.” I threw an arm around his shoulder in comradery, managing a small smile. He smiled a tiny bit back.

So we sat there, two guys alone in the world, finding solace in the presence of each other. I had never felt understood before quite like I did now with Charlie. He knew what it felt like to be abandoned, unwanted, discarded. He carried that weight same as I. He understood. And if having him around made _me_ feel a little less lonely, a little less angry, a little less worthless, I knew I couldn’t leave his side. Because if my presence had anything close to a similar effect on him, I couldn’t in my right mind deny him that comfort.

It wasn’t long before the door opened and my uncle returned home. By then, however, Charlie and I had long since left the couch to occupy our time otherwise, refusing to acknowledge that either of us had broken down in front of the other. I was reading a book in Russian as my uncle waltzed into the living room, followed closely behind by a stunningly gorgeous woman with blonde hair bright as sunlight and blue eyes as cold and dangerous as an icy sea.

“Which one is this, Charles?” She asked my uncle in her thick Russian accent.

“My nephew,” Uncle Chuck answered, pride in his voice and in his smile. “Lucifer. Lucifer Holmes.”

“It’s a pleasure,” I said as I set the book aside and jumped to my feet, offering my hand in greeting.

She shook my hand firmly, eyeing me up scrutinizingly. “If he didn’t look like a Holmes I wouldn’t believe it.”

I felt the jab hit me right in my chest, and the indignance welling up inside me as my friendly expression quickly soured into a frown. But before I had time to act upon my injured pride, Charlie came into the room, spotted Bernadette, and tripped over his own feet in his excitement. I shut my eyes painfully at the embarrassing sight as he covered the distance between himself and her in an ungraceful instant, shaking her hand incessantly.

“Ms. Bernadette! It’s such an honor and a pleasure to finally meet you! I’m-”

“The experiment,” Bernadette cut in, withdrawing her hand easily as Charlie froze up, a look of breathless disappointment replacing his uncontainable enthusiasm.

“His name is Charlie!!” I snapped viciously, unconsciously placing myself between the two of them. “Get it right or get the hell out!!”

Everyone was shocked into what was the silence that followed my outburst. I realized the second the words left my mouth that I had just dug my own grave, but I stubbornly held my ground, eyes blazing, willing to take the punch that I was certain was imminent. Bernadette’s eyes were cutting into me with intense disbelief as her mind tried to process just how she was going to kill me for my insolence. But when she shook herself out of the shock, she turned calm.

“I apologize,” she said quietly, her voice even, eyes looking first to me and then to Charlie. “Please, forgive me.”

Charlie, who was still in shock over me losing my cool, stuttered out a response. “I-It’s fine, you-… I-… thank you…”

With a nod, Bernadette accepted the forgiveness and seamlessly transitioned back into her all-business attitude. “Right. Now we mustn’t waste any more time. Come. Let us discuss our contract.”

She led Charlie and I into one of the spare bedrooms, shutting the door behind us as she tossed her duffle bag onto the bed. Satisfied that the room was secure, she unzipped the bag and threw down a thick manila folder, placing her hand atop it.

“These are the details of the mission. As acting leader, they are for me to know, and to brief to you at my discretion and my leisure. Is that understood?”

Charlie and I nodded. Satisfied, Bernadette continued.

“Our mission is a simple one on paper, but in reality will be a complicated and treacherous task.”

“But what _is_ our mission?” I cut in.

Bernadette gave me an icy stare. “Since I’m sure the two of you will agree to my terms no matter what they might be, I might as well cut to the chase. We’re hunting down agents. WOLF agents. Unarguably the _best_ agents in the field today, be it WOLF, CS, or otherwise. They are known as Nero and Venus. And we are to either convert them, eliminate them, or die trying.”


	14. Chapter 14

_He laughed. “Don’t tell me the three of you_ actually _planned to take our Nero and Venus? They’re our best agents for a reason. To be honest, I’m shocked you’re still around to tell the tale. But I’m going to assume that’s at least partially due to your… unique situation.”_

_Lucifer stared in stony silence, causing the man to smile. “Perhaps ‘partially’ is putting it too lightly.”_

_“Where are they? What did you do to them?”_

_“Where are they?” The man scoffed. “Shouldn’t_ you _be telling_ me _?”_

_“So you don’t know,” Lucifer sighed, a smirk coming to his face. “Good.”_

____________________________

We spent a week at my uncle’s house, preparing to enter the field. Bernadette trusted Charlie and I with very little information. We knew we were after Nero and Venus, and that they were the best agents in the field. And when the week came to a close, we were told we were headed to our first stakeout, and we were off.

Unfortunately, our first day in the field was not nearly as glorious as I had hoped. Charlie and I were camped out in an old fashion laundromat, where Bernadette had instructed us to stay and blend in until she showed up. It had been close to three hours, and I sat in a chair, cheek resting against my fist, elbow propped up on my knee, watching the endless wall of washers spin sudsy clothes around and around and around. A frustrated sigh escaped me, prompting Charlie to come over with the laundry he was folding that had been sitting abandoned in a dryer for some time.

“Was that the signal?” He asked quietly, anxiously.

“No,” I snapped half-heartedly. “I was just sighing.”

“Oh,” Charlie sighed too, returning to his folding for only a minute before he piped back up. “Do you think I should wash this sweatshirt? I didn’t have time at your uncle’s place.”

Before I could give him an answer, Charlie pulled it off over his head and fished quarters from his jeans as he tossed the sweatshirt into an empty washing machine. I listened as the machine rattled into motion, joining in the orchestra of shuttering machines, sloshing water, and loose change jingling.

“Maybe you should start folding that…” Charlie mused tersely as he stared down the heap of clothes at my feet that had long since been washed and dried. When I made no move to do so, Charlie took the liberty to do it himself.

My voice cut in quite suddenly. “Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“What? Bernadette?” Charlie looked at me innocently as he fixed an inside-out shirt. “No, she’s fine. I’m sure of it.”

“Yeah, but what if-…” My concern was cut short as the bell on the front door jingled, and my eyes and Charlie’s snapped to look, then quickly looked away when an old woman entered with laundry.

“Don’t worry,” Charlie repeated, lowering his voice.

I heaved another frustrated sigh, getting up to buy my fifth bottle of flat, outdated Coca Cola from an ancient vending machine gathering dust on the far end of the laundromat. The seal broke without so much as a hiss, and I took a grimacing gulp of the thick, sugary drink as the bell jingled once more at the front door. I didn’t need to look. I turned and strode back over to my pile of laundry, shoving everything back into my duffle bag as my eyes trailed Bernadette and her tail from behind the curly hair falling in my eyes. My eyes flickered briefly to Charlie, who now sat halfway across the room, eyes glued on his cell phone, earbuds in; a single glance from him and I knew we were all set. The duffle bag was slung over my shoulder, the gross Coke left on the bench as I made a quick exit.

This was the moment we had been waiting for all day. Just as Bernadette had said, someone had followed her as she made her way to the laundromat. The man stood loitering outside, looking like he could be hailing a taxi, or gathering his bearings, or something equally as unnoticeable. But we knew. And more importantly, I knew what I had to do. Now that the man was here, I had to find some way to follow him, figure out his travel plans, who he was in contact with, anything and everything I could.

My duffle bag caught him in the side as I shuffled past, earning me quite a nasty glare, to which I responded with raised hands and an apologetic look.

“Sorry man. My bad.” I said in slurred Russian as I purposefully stumbled over my own feet.

The man rolled his eyes, growling in Russian as he turned on his heel and began to walk away. “Stupid drunks.”

I watched him take a few steps before I produced his wallet in my hand, calling out as I jogged over to him. “Sir! Sir! You dropped this!”

He stopped to see what I was talking about, and quickly snatched his wallet from out of my hand. A look of confused injury came to my face as he offered no thanks or reward, but instead continued on his way. I watched him go before turning to shuffle down the street in the other direction, readjusting my duffle bag.

“Luke, what are you doing?!” I heard Bernadette snap through the earpiece hidden beneath my overgrown, shaggy hair.

“Just doing what you asked,” I mumbled, trying not to draw attention to myself.

“What I asked!?” I cringed at the volume she was transmitting at. “I _asked_ you to gather information on him!”

“Oh, you mean like his credit card number and his exact location?” I shook my head, coming to a halt at an empty bus stop.

A minute later, Bernadette appeared at the bus stop beside me, a look of mixed anger and confusion stuck on her face.

“You pickpocketed that wallet off of him,” she stated in something close to disbelief.

“And planted a tracking chip.” I added.

I heard her laugh a little in pleasant surprise. “And his card number?”

Without a word, I held out my hand for her to see. On it was imprinted his name and all the raised numbers making up the card number. “Better jot it down before I rub my eyes or something.”

“Remarkable,” Bernadette breathed, looking to me with a rare smile. “You did better than I could have hoped, Holmes.”

A small smile made an appearance on my somber face. “I seem to have impressed.”

Charlie’s voice cut in through a static-filled earpiece. “How long do I have the stay here?”

“Until dark,” Bernadette answered him sternly, her good mood concealed in an instant.

The bus rolled up to the stop, and Bernadette and I climbed in, taking a seat separately near the back. The two of us were taken back to the motel we were camping out in, at the very heart of Moscow’s poor district. There wasn’t much for me to do for a while. Bernadette set about tracking the man who had tailed her and hacking into his bank statements with the card number I provided. Charlie remained at the laundromat until close, being sure no one else came around inquiring about Bernadette, which would mean we were dealing with two agents instead of just the one. With the extra time on my hands, my mind wandered to thoughts of my dad, and of my Grandpa Sherlock. I wondered if they were out in the field, working on some secret project, tracking agents just like I was doing now. A hint of a smile came to my face at the thought of the three of us, working together, being an espionage family, a well-oiled machine of secret-gathering and WOLF agent-incapacitating. But the smile disappeared in an instant, knowing deep in my heart that more likely than not, the two of them were dead. Long dead.

Charlie stumbled back to the apartment not long after the sun disappeared, bringing with it a deadly chill. Shivering and hauling his duffle bag of laundry in the door, Bernadette immediately greeted him with questions. Once the two of them finished their little chat, Charlie found me sitting in the shower, my clothes perfectly on, I assure, and the water not running. He gave me a lopsided smile as he poked his head in.

“Hey,” he said, eyeing me curiously. “What you up to?”

“Bored,” I sighed heavily, running my hands into my hair to ruffle it.

“Well I’ve got news for you,” he grinned, sitting himself on the sink counter and kicking his feet. “Bernadette says she’s considering about thinking of doing a heist!”

“Sounds promising,” I mumbled sarcastically.

“Doesn’t it?” Charlie agreed excitedly. “I can’t wait!”

We sat there in silence for a short while, just me sulking in the tiny and admittedly questionably sanity shower, and Charlie sitting on the counter, eyes darting to take in every inch of the peeling wallpaper and tacky bathroom décor. When I couldn’t stand the thought of his sunny disposition sitting there beside me, I finally cut into the silence.

“What can you tell me about my family, Charlie?”

That took the smile right off his face. “Well, nothing, apparently… according to Mycroft…”

“Right, but let’s pretend for one second that Mycroft isn’t here…”

“He-… he isn’t here…” Charlie said, face scrunching up with confusion.

“Oh, would you look at that!” I said sarcastically pleased, eyebrows up in mock surprise.

Realizing the trap he had just walked into, Charlie pouted. “Oh… “

“Come on Charlie!” I half begged, half demanded.

“Honestly, Luke, I don’t know all that much!” Charlie defended helplessly.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I growled.

Charlie was just about to attempt an out, when Bernadette provided one for him as she entered the bathroom.

“You,” she fixed me with an icy look. “Get up and shape up. And you,” she shifted her gaze to Charlie. “Get down from there. That’s a counter, not a chair.”

We both obeyed in an instant, though our reluctance wasn’t completely covered up. It didn’t matter. We shaped up after her next few words: “We’re headed out.”

“Yeah?” I asked, still more moody than excited.

“Yes, Holmes,” she answered. “We used your tracking device planted on our target to pinpoint the location at which he’s staying. It’s a hotel, upscale. According to the same tracker, our man has just left and according to his credit card, is headed for a restaurant he paid for a reservation at. We’re going to get into his hotel room, drug his water supply, and wait at a nearby location for the man to pass out. Then we are to search his phone records and search history, see if he’s contacted anyone who could be our WOLF agents. Is that perfectly clear?”

“Absolutely,” I nodded. “But you may want to go over them again. Charlie wasn’t listening.”

“I-I was too!” Charlie chimed defensively from where he had been smelling the hand soap.

Bernadette rolled her eyes, muttering darkly in Russian about men as she stalked back out into the main motel room space.

I was fine until the taxi dropped us off at the hotel, at which points I began to notice several giant gaps in Bernadette’s plan. I decided to address my concerns to her in a panicked whisper.

“Hey,” I said quietly as the three of us approached the hotel. “How are we supposed to get into his room?”

“I’ll handle the details, Holmes,” she answered fiercely. “You two stay in the parking lot. Look like loiters. If you spot our man roll up before I’m done, give me a call.” She tapped her earpiece as she stuck out a hand and pushed me back, making her point quite clear.

So Charlie and I loitered around in the parking lot, me smoking through a pack of cigarettes and Charlie twiddling his thumbs. I paced, worrying if something had gone wrong, wondering just how Bernadette thought she could get into the man’s hotel room.

“How does she even know what room he’s in?” I blurted, my thoughts suddenly reaching my mouth.

Charlie looked at me with a little surprise, me having not spoken in the last ten minutes we had been standing around in the parking lot.

“Well…” he mused. “She was tracking him wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, but that’s not going to tell you what _room_ in a hotel to go to,” I ground the cigarette in my teeth, turning the tobacco and paper coating to mush and splitting it out, lighting a new cigarette in its stead and puffing on it fervently. Charlie began to wheeze and cough, and I cut back on the zealousness of my smoking.

“Move it you idiots!” I voice hissed at us.

I looked up to find Bernadette, shoving us across the parking lot and towards the bar next door to the hotel.

“He’s pulling up now! Come on, _move_!”

As discreetly as we could, he ran for the bar, ducking inside and taking refuge at a table in the corner, pints delivered promptly to our hands.

“How’d you know what hotel room he was in?” I asked almost immediately, dying to know.

“Simple,” Bernadette smiled. “I introduced myself as the man’s wife. Said he had purchased the room with our credit card, read off the numbers. They believed me, of course, and gave me both the room number and a spare key. Couldn’t have planned it better myself.”

“You _did_ plan it yourself,” Charlie added.

Bernadette smirked proudly. “So I did.”

The three of us waited in the bar, drinking a little but holding back, needing to be on high alert for the upcoming step in our heist. Bernadette kept a sharp eye on the clock and dismissed us when she decided had been long enough. We snuck back over to the hotel, and using the key card Bernadette had gotten, swiped into a back door and made our way up to the man’s hotel room. It was dimly lit, with only the light of the TV and the lights of the commercial buildings in view of the window illuminating the room. With gloves on our hands and no shoes on our feet, we flitting through the room like shadows, pouring over every scrap of everything we could find. Bernadette tapped the man’s phone and proceeded to listen to old voicemails and check the call logs and area codes on those calls. Charlie was scrolling on the man’s browser history on his personal laptop, checking for anything noteworthy. And I was tasked with rifling through the man’s briefcase to see if that were any documents or instructional letters from WOLF that may help us in our endeavor to located their agents Nero and Venus. Bernadette had spent months tracking the two, but found she simply couldn’t handle the task alone. With two more sets of hands helping her out, she was hoping this man, whom she had pinpointed as a financial asset to many important WOLF agents, would help her pinpoint Nero and Venus and trap them once and for all.

But as much as my mind as on the mission at hand, some words began to catch my eyes in some of the documents. Brief mentions of CS agents interfering on WOLF business. Then a mention of a Holmes. Before I knew it, I was pouring through the documents not searching for information to help us on our mission, but for any and all instances of Holmes being mentioned. And that’s when I came to it: not just a mention of Holmes, but a first name too. Hamish Holmes. My eyes were glued to the two words, breathing life to a fantasy I hadn’t dare entertain.

“Got it!” Bernadette called out to us, voice low, holding up the man’s phone. “Several calls to a dialing code +377. Matches up to some large withdrawals from this man’s bank account to a card most recently active in, get this, Monte Carlo, aka the location of the dialing code +377.”

“So our perps are living it up,” Charlie shook his head. “Typical. They get to gamble and romp on beaches and we get to chance them from Russia.”

“Not anymore,” Bernadette smiled. “This team is off to Monte Carlo.”


	15. Chapter 15

I should have been thrilled. We were hunting down notorious agents, in one of the most beautiful cities in the worlds. But I guess that’s my luck: when everything should be cheering me up to no end, there’s always that one pesky detail that keep me in a foul mood. In this case, as the three of us were flying across Europe to Monte Carlo, France, it was those two words I had found in the briefcase. Hamish Holmes. The longer I dwelled, the more I realized the name sounded oddly familiar. And then I placed it. When I first brought up the name Holmes with Charlie, back when Mycroft was introducing the two of us, Hamish Holmes was the other name amongst my father’s and my grandfather’s. That meant that Charlie knew _something_ about this Hamish character, which also meant I would need to harass him for information. Again.

But there’s a time and place to harass your field partner, and in front of your commanding agent while stuck on an airplane for several more hours was _neither_ the time nor the place.

The harder I tried not to think about this Hamish Holmes anymore, the more my mind wandered to my friends and family at home. I had never really felt attached to London, to the city or the people who lived there. I always felt that if I wanted to, I could leave London behind and not miss it one bit. But thinking of Johnny and Lily, their constant company week in and week out no matter how much of an ass I was to them, of my Uncle James and Aunt Kate, who tried their hardest to make me feel welcomed and loved despite my less-than-tolerable bitterness, of poor Molly Hooper who yelled at me at least twice a day but would go to hell and back just to know I was happy and who was now alone because I _had_ decided to leave. It was the first time I had felt stirring, painful regret in my chest since joining the Clandestine Syndicate, and it wasn't about to be the last.

“Here’s the deal,” Bernadette cut into the silence as she finalized our plan of action in her head. “Focus up boys.”

“We’re focused,” I answered, sounding a bit drained.

“Good. When we touch down in Monte Carlo, we’re going to have the element of surprise on our side. Nero and Venus won’t know we’re there, so they won’t know to hide or run. As much as it would be nice to settle down for a few days and get some eyes on our targets, figure out a proper trap, we have no guarantee those two will be in Monte Carlo for very long, if they’re even still there. So we have to get out in the field while he still have surprise as an advantage. Charlie, you’re in charge of covering the Opera, Salle Garnier. I’ll be at the Hôtel de Paris, and Lucifer, you’ll be staked out at the Monte Carlo Casino.”

“Aww no fair!” Charlie whined.

“No offense, Charlie, but I don’t think they let fifteen-year-olds into casinos,” I snickered.

“Ha ha, very funny!”

“Cut it out you two,” Bernadette huffed impatiently. “The assignments are final. Are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Charlie and I answered in unison.

“Good. When we touch down, we no longer know each other. We’re to meet back at our motel at dawn. I’ll text you the details on that location. Memorize it, and delete the text.”

“Okay, but quick question,” I frowned. “If we _do_ find these Nero and Venus characters, how are we supposed to know? Just ask them, ‘Excuse me, but are those two notorious WOLF agents?’. Don’t you have some pictures we could look at?”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed with a nod. “What gives?”

Bernadette rolled her eyes in annoyance. “We’ve got photos, but they’re outdated. These two changes about as much as a bipolar chameleon; more, actually. All I can tell you for certain is we’re male and female duo, professional as they come. We do have an agent staked out in the area who is supposed to contact us if he gets a confirmed photo. Then we’ll have a face to put to our names. But until then, keep your eyes peeled for anything.”

Next thing I knew, the three of us had split ways. The first few hours at the casino were a ball, despite the desertedness one would except from a casino at four thirty in the afternoon. I spent a lot of time at the blackjack tables, counting cards and reaping the rewards as easily as playing go fish. However, my uncanny success was starting to turn heads from dealers and security alike—which I wouldn’t have minded, had I not been tasked with staking out the casino all night long—and so I had to lay low. After a couple hours wasting my earnings away at the slot machines to appease the men in suits, I ended up at the bar. Admittedly, I had a few more drinks than I should have, and once I began to feel the elating effects of the alcohol and the weight of winnings in my pocket, it was hard to stop the drinks from coming.

I had most certain lost track of time. Hell, I wasn’t quite certain was I was when someone approached me at the bar. She was a woman, perhaps my age, perhaps not—hard to tell with the alcohol fuzzing up the details—but one thing I was sure of was that she was drop dead gorgeous. Dark hair, almost black, straight and shimmering in the ambient light, bangs coming down to brush the tops of her eyes, which twinkled an intense icy blue, squinting a bit as her full cheeks on high cheekbones rose up for a smile. And her dress…. Can’t recall the details, apart from the undisputable fact that it was elegant, like her.

“Hey.” Her voice was friendly, a little raspy, the voice of a childhood best friend.

My eyes flickered to follow her motions as she sat beside me and ordered a Shirley Temple.

“Hello,” I answered, my slurring voice sounding much too loud and nervous.

She smiled more, causing the butterflies to melt away; there was something so utterly reassuring about her smile, something so damn familiar it might have bothered me if I hadn’t been so intoxicated.

“The dealer at the blackjack table was telling us about you,” she laughed a little, sipping her drink through a little straw as it appeared on the bar top, eyes widening in pleasant surprise. “Mm that’s good! Anyways, she was talking about how much you managed to win off the house earlier.”

“Is that a problem?” I blurted, immediately wanting to sock myself in the face.

She giggled. “No, not at all. You see, we were looking to blow some money tonight, just have a little fun, you know? And seeing as you don’t seem to be up to much at the moment… care to join us in our fun…?” She paused, eyeing me as expecting an introduction.

It took a minute for the social cues to click in my alcohol-fogged head, but when they id, my hand shot out. “Lucifer.”

She smiled pleasantly, taking my hand for a gentle shake. “Lucifer. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine,” I grinned easily, my hands already working to fish out my winnings and pay my tab.

Dark hair and bangs took me over to a roulette table—I have no clue how I was able to walk at all, to be honest—where someone saw us coming and stood to greet us, arms open. This man screamed illegal-diamond-smuggling-made-my-dad-rich-and-I’m-the-brat-with-the-riches, with dark hair styled with enough high-end product to cost just as much as his suit, a flawlessly crisp Westwood. Despite the neatness of his hair and clothing, his face was ruggedly unshaven and his icy blue eyes sparkled with a mischief suggesting the state of his suit was the last thing on his mind.

“Ah, there’s the man of the hour!” He chuckled in a voice like devilishly purple velvet—a metaphor that makes little sense to me sober, but in the moment seemed to rival the eloquence of Shakespeare—clapping a hand to my shoulder as his other arm took dark hair and bangs around the waist. “Ready to try your luck, my man?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be!” I smiled, feeling a small uneasiness nagging at me from some crapped place in the back of my mind—it was almost as if I were forgetting I had some important job to be doing.

“Great!” He smirked, helping me into my seat before he sat to my left, dark hair and bangs sitting to my right.

I made my first bet on a whim. The wheel was spun, the ball. I was cheering alongside purple velvet and dark hair and bangs before my brain really knew what was going on. My first bet was a great one. And in all the excitement, magnified by the alcohol, the nagging sensation was snuffed out by the buzz rushing through me to my fingertips and down to my toes. Details are rather fuzzy, but all I knew is the three of us kept betting throughout the casino, kept drinking, kept our streak of serendipitous wins going all night long. Literally _all_ night. I faintly recall a security guard coming over to us as we all were practically passed out at the slot machines, and purple velvet had a quick quiet word with him, lightened his pocket, and we weren’t bothered again.

Next thing I knew, something was hitting my face, lightly. I twitched, coming back to the world quite slowly and finding it full of stabbing pain. The hitting turned rougher, and my hand shot out, grabbing successfully to the wrist of the hand doing the hitting. My eyes cracked open with enough protest to rival a rusted iron door. It was a terrible mistake. Light stabbed through my pupils and drilled violently into my brain. My eyes snapped shut a terrible groan erupting from my chest and I slowly became aware of the rest of my person, aching all over.

“Hey Luke,” I heard Charlie’s voice, picked up on the snicker he tried to keep quiet. “Have a fun night?”

I let my fingers crush down on his wrist which was still in my grasp, and I smiled contentedly at his indignant cry of pain. Using his arm as an anchor, I hoisted myself into a sitting position, a wave of nausea quickly washing over me and taking its sweet time receding. Lucky for me, Charlie did all the work getting me on two feet, and kept me there with a steady arm around my shoulders.

“You can tell me all about it later,” he said, and I suddenly picked up on the excitement in his voice, peaking reluctantly to find his face beaming. “You know that guy who was supposed to try and get us pictures of our WOLF agents?”

“Yeah…?” God, my voice sounded like I had been hungover for a decade and a half.

I wasn’t sure if it was the sun or Charlie’s smile that blinded me more. “Well he got us some!”

If the taxi ride back to our motel wasn’t rough enough—the cabbie didn’t know the break could be applied _subtly_ , much to my stomach’s misfortune—the look on Bernadette’s face… let’s just say I would have preferred a punch to the face.

“Well well well, look what the genetic experiment drug in.” Her arms were folded across her chest, her face dark, piercing blue eyes burrowing into my soul and tapping into a well of guilt that came spewing forth.

“Bernadette…” I began, not sure what to say; in all honestly, I didn’t really remember enough o formulate an excuse.

“Save it, Holmes.” She put a hand to stop me. “Just be glad our perps weren’t at the casino.”

I heaved a sigh of relief under my breath. “I heard we got faces to our names now..?”

She smiled, just a little, just a hint. “See for yourself.”

Charlie was practically bouncing with excitement as Bernadette handed us the manila folder that contained the pictures. Finally, the mysterious and elusive WOLF agents could be caught. Now that we knew what they looked like…

My stomach dropped and my heart beat in my throat as I opened the folder. I didn’t remember much from my night at the Monte Carlo casino, but there wasn’t mistaking the dark hair and bangs, nor the yacht-club-sky-diver air of purple velvet, both of which were staring me down from the photographs in the folder. I stared. I stared and blinked and tried desperately to come to realization that the WOLF agents pictured couldn’t _possibly_ be the two charismatics from the casino. But the longer I stared, the more set in stone the resemblance became.

Purple velvet and dark hair and bangs were the notorious, most dangerous, most ruthless of WOLF agents, Nero and Venus.


	16. Chapter 16

_“You’re telling me your first encounter with the nastiest of WOLF agents was a crazy casino night…?”_

_Lucifer laughed. “Yeah, that just about sums it up.”_

_He frowned. “Please, continue. As I recall, your momentum didn’t continued.”_

_“It’s true…”_

____________________________

It all began to fall apart soon after our trip to Monte Carlo. We were tracking Nero and Venus across Europe, working our asses off late at night in Romania when Bernadette got the call. She was needed on other more pressing business, something having to do with the triennial conference that was apparently fast approaching. And so our terrific trio became the dynamic duo, just Charlie and me. The two of us continued to try and bumble our way after the slippery likes of Nero and Venus, but without Bernadette and her expertise and her contacts, our trail dried up within a month.

Charlie and I were pouring over all our maps and clues, everything we had, in this cramp little motel room in Luxembourg. We had been running around without a solid lead for close to an entire week at that point, and the both of us were beyond exhausted. I remember I glanced over to find he had fallen asleep against our corkboard of info, and I let out a huge sigh. In that moment, the chase really did seem pointless. I began to question it all, as I sat rubbing at my stinging eyes and feeling the weight of our sleepless week crushing down on me. What was the point of chasing after the WOLF agents anyways? In the time we had been after them, they hadn’t killed anyone, they hadn’t broken any major laws, and they hadn’t even so much as threatened us or any other agents. When Bernadette had been working with us, the anger and vengeance burning in her eyes every time we spoke of Nero and Venus was enough to keep me convinced, but without her…

And then my thoughts wandered to my dad, and my grandfather. All this time, hunting after some preppy agents who just enjoyed getting drunk and having fun like any people their age, I could have been seeking out my family, answering the questions that had plagued my life for so long. Why did they leave? Where did they go? Why didn’t they come back for me? Once more, my mind fell onto the topic of the mysterious Hamish Holmes. I reached over to Charlie and gave him a shake. He groaned, blinking awake.

“Charlie?”

“Hmm…?”

“What do you know about Hamish Holmes..?”

He grumbled something incoherent, eyes fluttering shut and face leaning heavily into the corkboard. I gave him another rousing shake.

“Hmmm..!?” He sounded more annoyed, though he wouldn’t be bothered to open his eyes.

“Hamish Holmes, Charlie!”

“What about him…?” His voice was hardly coherent.

I was about to continue pushing when the both of us were startled by the sound of my phone ringing. I turned to where it sat buzzing in a fervent circle, picking it up and squinting at the screen. Johnny Watson. Frowning heavily, mind racing with what the call could possibly be about, I answered, Charlie watching me intently despite his heavy eyelids.

“Hello…?”

“Luke! Thank God!!” He sounded panicked. That wasn’t like him. Not unless…

“What’s happened? Is it Lily?”

“Yeah!” He was out of breath, panting. “She went out last night with some friends, told me to keep quiet about it. She wasn’t home by morning so I checked the usual spots… I can’t find her Luke!! I’m worried sick! What if something’s gone wrong!? What if she’s been arrested!? What if she’s in the hospital!? Oh God, if our mum and dad find out…!!”

“Johnny, stay calm, I’m on my way now, I promise!” I was already pulling on a coat and slipping searching for my shoes.

“Where are you..?” I could tell he didn’t trust me to be there anytime soon.

“I’m close Johnny, honest!” I glanced at Charlie to find he had already picked up on what was going on, and was struggling into his oversized sweatshirt and gathering up our maps and other such information. “Seriously, I’ll be there _really_ soon! Have you tried calling her?”

“Of _course_ I’ve tried calling her!!” The anger in Johnny’s usually soft voice felt like punch to the gut, though in my mind I knew it wasn’t directed at me; not really.

“Johnny, stay _calm_ , okay?” I was stashed all the papers on my desk on my laptop keyboard and clamp them inside as it folded and got stashed in my bag. “Look, reach out to the homeless network. Her dealers. Any friends you can track down. Stay productive, I’ll be there ASAP!!”

The line clicked shut on Johnny’s end, and with both my hands free I began to pack and dress twice as fast. I nodded to Charlie to continue as I got back on the phone, dialing our current currier.

“Thank you for calling Enterprise, how may I help you today?”

“Would you recommend a Cadillac in lilac or chartreuse?”

“State your identification.”

“Holmes-Cubed reporting in for myself and Twinkletoes.”

“What service do you require?”

“Private jet.”

“For when do you need your request?”

“Immediately.”

“And you destination?”

“London, England.”

“A cab will arrive to transport your shortly.”

The line clicked shut, and I turned to find Charlie had finished packing everything. He was looking at me with growing concern, fatigue forgotten.

“Is everything alright…?” He asked, in that dreading sort of tone suggesting he just _knew_ everything wasn’t.

“It’s my cousin, Lily,” I cut to the chase. “More like a sister to me, really. That was her brother, Johnny. She’s gone missing. Went out for the night to get high and didn’t show up in the morning. Johnny can’t find her in any of her usual bolt-holes.”

“And you think you can help?”

I shrugged on my backpack, waiting impatiently by the door. “I know a few hideouts that she keeps secret from even her brother. And I know a few more places I used to frequent she may have found out about.”

“ _You_ know of places…?” I could see his eyebrows skyrocket out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t have time to explain my whole childhood to him then and there, so I kept a stony silence.

It wasn’t ten more minutes before the cab rolled up. Charlie and I ducked inside, provided some secret phrase answers, a little identification, glared an “it’s classified” at any more inquiries into our business, and we were on our way to the jet, waiting to take us to London. A part of me was happy to be going home, even if it was on such poor terms. However, a greater part of me feared the return, feared that somehow everything had changed. I feared that London would no longer be the London I remembered it being. Worst of all, I feared that _I_ had changed far too much, and that I wouldn’t be able to be the guy living in London that I remembered being. And that scared me most of all.

We touched down in London after about an hour. We left our bags and the like with the jet, and were prowling London’s streets without wasting a moment of time. One call to Johnny confirmed he hadn’t gotten anywhere. I began to comb through all the places I knew of. The first two were empty of any Lily’s, ours or otherwise. The third location was an old run-down house that I was more than familiar with. It had been one of my grandpa’s old drug dens, way back in the day before my Aunt Kate was even born. I entered with Charlie at my heels, immediately being met with a ferret-faced man with shifty eyes and clothes smelling like oil and piss.

“Oi!” He interjected.

“It’s me, Bumper,” I snapped impatiently.

He squinted. “Lil Lucy..? It’s been an age!”

I didn’t make eye contact. “I’m lookin’ for someone. A chick. Black hair, goes by Lily.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, moving out of my way to let me up the stairs.

I climbed the old, rickety things, coming face to face with someone too familiar at the top of the stairs.

“What you doing nosin’ around here, huh? Get lost.”

I looked him in the eye, deadly calm. “You’re Kyle aren’t you?”

“Yeah, got a prob-” The kid didn’t have time to finish; my hand was already clamped down on his windpipe and throwing him down the stairs.

“Charlie, you go left, I’ll go right.”

Charlie nodded silently, entering the second floor with me and searching every nook and cranny for my cousin. I worked my way through everyone in the opposite direction, my heart pounding in my ears when I heard the sound of raised voices from the far side of the second floor. Quickly, I went to see if all was okay with Charlie, finding him crouched over the limp form of my cousin with this hulk of a guy screaming at him from behind, fists and stance just oozing aggression.

“Hey Lily, you okay?” Charlie’s voice was soft as he shined his phone into her eyes to check her pupil response.

“The fuck you doing, man!? That’s my girlfriend!!” The hulking guy pulled Charlie away from Lily.

I was just about to run over and help when I was frozen to the spot by what happened next. Charlie totally decked the guy. Straight out punched him hard as he could in his face. And boy, did he drop like a stone!! Rattled the floorboards as he hit the ground, knocked out. Lily had sat up attentively when her ‘boyfriend’ had gotten rough with Charlie, and her mouth hung slack at the sight she had just witnessed.

“Lily!” I ran over, immediately crouched by her. “What the hell!?”

“I’m fine,” she assured, still rattled. “I just… I fell asleep, okay..? It’s no big deal…”

She eyed Charlie curiously. “Is that the guy you beat the shit out of, Luke..?”

Charlie smiled innocently. “We go by partners now. On most days. I’m Charlie.”

“Lily,” she nodded, shifting to get to her feet and suddenly very dizzy.

“You alright? I asked, taking her pulse. “Can you walk..?”

She shook her head numbly, the haze of whatever she had taken not quite passed. Without another word, Charlie scooped her up bridal style, shifting her weight a bit before standing easily.

“Where do we take her…?” He asked.

“I’ve got an apartment nearby,” I said, leading the way to the stairs in the hardly lit room. “I’ll call Johnny and have him meet us there.”

The cab ride to my apartment was tense, to say the least. Lily practically fell asleep on Charlie, who kept a weather eye on her pulse and vital signs to assure the both of us she was still okay. I barked at the cabbie that it was all official Scotland Yard business, but with my fake DI badge in my other trousers, it was difficult to convince the guy to keep his mouth shut. In the end, I walked away with a wallet quite a bit lighter but my confidence in the man’s silence about as high as it could be.

With Lily curled up in my bed and Charlie and I sitting at the foot awaiting Johnny, my somber visage suddenly broke into a smile.

“Nice punch,” I commented with a quiet laugh.

“Yeah,” Charlie smiled wryly, looking at his hand with bloodied knuckles. “He deserved it, the dick-head.”

“That’s her boyfriend you know.”

Charlie snorted bitterly. “Not anymore it’s not. He’s the shittest boyfriend I’ve ever seen.”

“Charlie,” I corrected gently. “You’ve _never_ seen a boyfriend before.”

“Yeah, well, he’s still the shittiest. Hands down.”

Johnny showed up before much longer, looking quite the worse for wear after having been tearing through drug den after drug den for who knows how long. He roused Lily only to scold her and dote on her all at once, relieved to see her okay and bent on making sure he’d never have that sort of scare again. After all the scolding and sobbing, Lily was feeling much more like herself, and went and got a shower while we tossed her clothes in the wash. While the three of us waited for her, Charlie rummaged through my scant kitchen and managed to make just enough grilled cheese sandwiches for me, Johnny, and himself. Mine and Johnny’s were done cooking first, and as we wolfed them down and watch Charlie make his own, Lily came out, hair wet and dressed in a largely oversized pair of my sweats she had found in the flat somewhere.

“That smells so good,” she remarked, eyeing mine and Johnny’s sandwiches with envy.

“Here,” Charlie piped up as he took his sandwich from the pan and set it on a plate. “Got one right here with your name on it.”

“Thanks.” Lily offered up a small smile as she took the sandwich. “It’s Charlie, right..?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Charlie smiled sheepishly. “Glad to see your memory’s intact.”

“Hard to forget the bloke who decked my boyfriend,” She remarked offhandedly as she took a big bite out of her sandwich, taking a moment to chew pensively. “Make that _ex_ -boyfriend.”

“We ought to be getting you two home,” I cut in, eyeing Lily and Johnny. “You know, before your mum and dad start to worry.”

“Yeah Lily,” Johnny added. “Aunt Angie is supposed to be visiting today.”

Lily immediately perked up. “Really? With our cousins..?”

I frowned intensely; in all the years I had been close with Johnny and Lily, never had I once heard mention of an Aunt Angie. “Who..?”

“Our Aunt Angie,” Johnny smiled as Lily ran to fetch her clothes from the dryer. “We hardly ever see her. She travels around way too much. She’s our dad’s sister.”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Uncle James has a sister..? Since when?”

I caught Charlie’s interested glance, and Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about her much. We’re really not supposed to talk about her outside of the family, but you’re family Luke.”

“Thanks mate,” I put on a smile.

Johnny smiled back, finishing his sandwich. “So how long you home for?”

I looked to Charlie, then back at my cousin. “Maybe the night. We have to get back to tracking these two agents. They’re about as easy to catch as dust in the wind.”

“Sounds rough,” Johnny said. “You ought to at least stay for dinner, though. Mum and Dad always love when you visit.” He turned to smile at Charlie. “And you’re invited too, obviously.”

“We ought to be off then,” I remarked dryly as I shoved my half-eaten sandwich into Charlie’s hands, which he promptly devoured.

I was headed to check up on Lily when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I looked to find the number to be blocked, answering with a frown.

“Hello..?”

“A little birdy told me my favorite Holmes was back in town.”

I rolled my eyes, letting out a pent-up sigh. “Hello to you too, Phineas.”

“My advice has always served you well, hasn’t it Lucy?”

Another angry sigh. “Yeah, for the most part.”

“Then listen to it this once: leave. Now. Get out of London.”

“What..? Why-?” The line clicked closed.

That was always the problem with Phineas. He was always so blunt, so confident that I’d simply take his advice because it was _his_. But far too often, I _didn’t_ take his advice for the exact same reason. And this was one of those times.

“Come on everybody!” I called into the flat. “I’m calling us a cab! Last one in is a rotten egg!”

I was happy. At least, what I considered to be happy. I was home, in London, with my two very best friends, as well as Charlie. And as the four of us raced down the building’s stairs, pushing and shoving and giggling the whole way down to the ground floor, I almost forgot that things had changed, that I was bound to leave before the night was out, that I was to continue chasing ghosts or die trying, far away from home and the friends that lived there. We kept laughing through the cab ride, poking fun at Charlie, our rotten egg. We laughed up to the front door of my Uncle James and Aunt Kate’s house. We came laughing into the foyer. And then the laughter died in mine and Charlie’s throats. Standing there, talking with my uncle and aunt, sipping tea casually, smiling politely, we’re the WOLF agents Nero and Venus.

“Nicolas! Vanessa!” Lily and Johnny chimed in unison, meeting the WOLF agents with warm hugs and huge smiles.

Charlie looked at me with eyes as big as saucers, and for once, I didn’t blame him. For once, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what the hell was going on.


	17. Chapter 17

As much as Nero and Venus were professionals at their work as spies, and as much as they were the top enemies to the CS, you can’t forget that at the heart of it all, they were people. People have family, friends, other people they care about, other people they love, that they hope to protect. Just as I wished to keep the dangers of my new life as a CS agent from harming my closest friends in London, Nero and Venus wished to do the same for their mother. And so, despite what would have been a bloody mess on a normal basis, while at the Watson house, the WOLF agents were at peace with Charlie and me, the CS agents.

The story of Angel Moriarty, the mother of Nero and Venus, was conveyed to Charlie and me by my Uncle James, who chatted with us as we all sipped wine in James’ office, away from everyone else.

“She’s my sister,” he began as the subject came up. “Half-sister, like any of my siblings, I suppose. And older, too, just by a few years. We only ever found out about her after my brothers and I killed our father, Jim Moriarty. Jay took over disassembling the old man’s network from the inside-out, and while he was doing so he uncovered some files. Money, leaving Moriarty’s bank accounts every month, going through all sorts of shell corporations that Jay took months to break, eventually landing in the personal account of an Angel Marie Moriarty. She was in the States, studying at nursing school; nothing suspicious about her. So we all let the matter drop.

“Well, once the money stopped showing up in her bank account, Angie got concerned about her father, and what might have happened to him, so she visited Europe. Jay was the only one who knew; he was still keeping tabs on Moriarty’s assets, even after you were born, Luke. Your father went and confronted her, found out she was pregnant, unable to work, and quickly going bankrupt without the regular funding Moriarty had provided for her for so long. So Jay dropped everything—his job, his life in Paris, even his visits to you, Luke—to support Angie and get her established and on her feet here in Europe. After she had her babies—it was twins, Nicholas and Vanessa—Jay introduced her to me and your Aunt Kate. She’s a very sweet woman—must take after her mother. She hardly visited while the twins were little, but she made an effort to show for a day or two any time she had business in London. Nicholas and Vanessa were usually in boarding school, but during the summer they’d often come by for a week or so and spend time with Johnny and Lily, once they were a bit older. We hardly see them anymore, with their jobs and all. It’s really a treat to have them visiting.”

“Do you know how long they’ll be staying?” I asked, having plowed through three glasses of wine; having to listen to stories involving my dad usually do that to me.

My Uncle James shrugged, refilling my glass without question, and topping Charlie’s off. “No clue. I doubt they’ll be long, but hopefully they’ll stay at least through the weekend. I could ask the same of you two. Mr. Charlie, we’d love to get to know you more. Luke here doesn’t have very many colleagues that stick around this long.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious, Uncle James. We _just_ work together.”

Charlie realized what my uncle was implying in the middle of a sip of wine, nearly choking as his face flushed red. James flashed a brief smile.

“Alright Luke. You know your Aunt and I and Ms. Hooper will always love you, no matter what.”

Just when I thought I might die of embarrassment, my Aunt Kate swooped in and saved the day, par the norm; or so I thought.

“Jamie, I need your help with dinner. Do you mind?” She smiled as she saw Charlie and me there as well. “Hello boys. Did you stop by just to mooch our wine or are you planning to stay for dinner?”

“I-I’d love to have dinner, Mrs. Watson,” Charlie managed politely, face still red as a tomato.

Kate smiled mischievously. “Please, Mrs. Watson was my mother. Kate is fine, Charlie dear.”

“Oh, in that case, we’d love to have dinner, Mrs. Kate.”

James grinned impishly as he joined my aunt in the doorway, gracing her cheek with a kiss. “It’s ‘we’ now, is it?”

If looks could kill, my aunt and uncle would have had a nasty surprise coming; I cut in. “Yes, _I’d_ like dinner too, if it’s not too much to ask.”

“Not at all Ciefer sweetheart.” My aunt blew me a kiss, trying not to burst out laughing as my uncle tittered like a child beside her; she tugged on James’ arm as they both disappeared into the kitchen.

Charlie looked to my sympathetically. “Tough crowd…”

“Those two never act their age.” I stalked towards the door. “Come on. We best join the others before anyone thinks we’re making out in here…”

Poor Charlie needed no further prompting. We went to the living room, where Johnny and Lily were laughing helplessly with Nero and Venus, who were both all smiles. Angel was there too, and she smiled as Charlie and I came in.

“You must be Lucifer,” she said, offering a hand and a gentle smile, her eyes brown and warm and friendly. “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you from James and Kate and these two. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Yeah, you too,” I put on my meeting-new-people-I’m-supposed-to-like smile.

She turned with a brighter smile to Charlie. “And you must be Charlie. Lily had a thing or two to say about you.”

Charlie smiled and shook her hand as Johnny rolled his eyes from his spot in the corner of the couch, beside Lily, where he muttered:  “More like a thing or two or three or four or a million… Ow!!”

Lily’s elbow in his ribs shut my eldest cousin up, and I quickly noticed how neither Charlie nor Lily were willing to make eye contact with one another. A groan nearly escaped me as the deduction came unexpectedl: they were smitten with one another.

“I’m off to help James and Kate in the kitchen,” Angel announced. “You kids play nice.”

And then it was just Charlie and me with Nero and Venus; I mean, Johnny and Lily were there too, but you get the idea…

“It’s Lucifer, right?” Were the first words out of Venus—Vanessa—’s mouth.

“Yeah,” I answered flatly.

She smiled. “Vanessa. And my less beautiful brother here is Nicky.”

“Guilty as charged,” Nero—Nicholas—laughed to himself. “So you two work together, did I hear that correctly?”

“We do,” Charlie answered, his normally disgustingly cheery tone quite dampened by the peculiar and frankly dangerous situation we were in.

“Where would that be?” Vanessa asked innocently, blinking her big blue eyes as she sipped from a glass of lemonade.

“Politics.”

“Real-estate.”

I shot Charlie a glare that could have killed him, as he stood stock still in panic. I spoke back up quickly as my mind could think.

“We do real-estate, but for politicians. Ambassadors, mostly. You know, get them situated, set them up with a place to remind them of home.”

“How fun!” Vanessa smiled, mockingly amused.

“You about you two?” I shot back, trying my hardest to keep the bitterness from my voice.

They responded in unison. “Classified.”

I was immediately pissed that Charlie and I hadn’t thought to use the same excuse.

And audible, dramatic sigh from Lily cut into the banter.

“I’m bored,” she huffed. “Let’s play Monopoly. I never got my chance at vengeance since that last game with you two!”

Nicholas grinned impishly. “I’m afraid I’m just too good at Monopoly, Lilianna Cassandra.”

She flipped him off and stuck out her tongue crudely. “You got lucky winning Parkplace, Nicholas Sebastian. I demand a rematch.”

“I’m game,” Vanessa beamed, genuinely enthusiastic, looking to Charlie and me. “You two in..?”

I began to politely decline, but Charlie’s excited reply drowned me out.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

Johnny laughed knowingly. “Oh boy! If Luke’s playing, Nick and Lil have a much bigger problem on their hands than each other!”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll try and go easy on them. Just this once.”

____________________________

_“So you’re telling me, after months of searching for agents Nero and Venus, you wind up running into them at a house party and decide to play board games with them instead of finally capturing them? I mean, I knew you CS agents had little to no training, but this-…”_

_“Oh shut up. It didn’t matter in the end.”_

_“Yes, but you couldn’t have possibly known that at the time. But please, continue.”_

____________________________

It honestly was such a pleasant night; I hadn’t been so social in as long as I could recall. In the throes of our heated game of Monopoly, I completely forgot that Nicholas and Vanessa were the targets Charlie and I were swore to convert or kill. And I could’ve swore the two of them forgot that Charlie and I were their enemies. I was far too caught up in sabotaging Lily and Nicholas that I didn’t realize how much money Charlie was making, and all the hotels he was erecting on his property. A few rolls later, Lily landed on his hotel-saturated property and went bankrupt; a few more rolls saw the rest of us penniless. We may have killed the grinning, victorious Charlie if Kate Eloise hadn’t called us all to dinner. And what a dinner it was! I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard, smiled so much, ate enough for three…

But like all good things in my life, the night ended by crashing and burning. Charlie and I took a cab back to my flat downtown, still in a great mood as we drove through the bustle and lights of the London nightlife. As long as Nicholas and Vanessa were in town, the two of us could stay as well. I was running my mouth, going on and on to Charlie about all the things we could do the next morning, when I suddenly paused, hand on my keys and eyes on the door to my flat. With my free hand, I gave the door a gentle push, and it swung open on its own. Charlie was looking to me, curious but not yet concerned.

“Did you forget to lock up when we left earlier…?” He asked, trying to be helpful.

I didn’t answer, stepping cautiously into the flat, hand reaching instinctually to where my Scotland Yard issue handgun should have been, but wasn’t. The flat was pitch black, having been lit up by the daylight flooding through the windows when we had left. I reached for the switch on the wall and flicked the lights on, my eyes fixing on the figure lounging lazily on my couch, drinking scotch from a glass.

“Ah, Lucy. I’m going to assume this means you didn’t take my advice.”

“Get out,” I snapped.

“You really ought to get yourself better locks if you’re going to work in the business of secrets.”

“I said… _Get. Out._ ”

Phineas looked over, an easy smile on his smug face. “Ah, this must be your experimental partner you were telling me about.” He rose to his feet, approaching Charlie and me and offering a hand to my confused partner.

“A proper introduction is in order. Phineas Rutherford Sinclair, code-name Solo Six; Political standing, assigned to the British Parliament.”

Charlie took his hand in a friendly hand-shake. “Charles Arthur Bennet Alistar, code-name Twinkletoes; Field Agent standing, assignment classified.”

Phineas smiled more, the look setting me on edge. “A real proper agent. I thought you said he was new, Lucy.”

“Born and raised, Mr. Sinclair,” Charlie responded, having turned relaxed since learning our intruder was a CS agent.

Phineas eyed me with mild interest. “I don’t think you ever told me _your_ code-name, Lucifer.”

“Holmes-Cubed,” I answered dryly, pouring myself a glass of scotch to deal with the whole situation that had raised its overly-groomed head.

“Typical,” Phineas tsked to himself, finishing his scotch, spending a pensive moment staring at the ice cubes left in the glass.

“What do you want, Phineas?” I growled, knowing he was stalling.

He looked up from his glass, walking over to me to set his glass with the scotch, fixing me with a look of icy seriousness, voice low, menacing. “You need to leave.”

“Our targets are here in London, we’re not le-”

“You’re mistaken.”

I stopped, frowning. “What..?”

He nodded to my pocket. “Make a call. They’re not there anymore.”

I hesitated a minute, mind racing with what Phineas could possibly gain, then the phone was in my hand, dialing Johnny. He answered after a few rings.

“Hey Luke, what’s up?”

“Johnny, I need to ask Nicholas something. Could you put him on?”

“What…? He’s not here.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Well Vanessa then…”

“No, Luke,” Johnny cut in. “They’re both gone. They left shortly after you and Charlie, said they had to get back for their jobs in the morning…”

I was trying to sound calm, despite the panic rising internally. “So where did they go?”

“I don’t know, Luke, I’m sorry…”

I hung up quickly, not confident I could keep calm any longer. I looked up from the phone, noticing Charlie’s big worried eyes fixed on me expectantly, and Phineas’ impassively awaiting to hear what he apparently already knew.

“Th-They’re gone,” I gulped, speaking mostly to Charlie.

“Look Lucifer,” Phineas began, tone patronizingly calm and disappointed. “Give this up. This goose chase, it’s beneath you. Go to headquarters. I’ll put in a good word. Mycroft, he’ll-…”

He cut himself off as my phone began to ring in my hand. I looked to it, eyebrows raising in surprise as the caller displayed.

I answered. “Alfie…?”

“Holmes. Good, I wasn’t sure you’d-… listen, you don’t happen t-… you don’t happen to be in London, do you?”

There was something off. About everything. The timing, his tone… “Yeah, I am actually. Why, what’s up..?”

“There’s a bloke here, at the Yard, asking for you by name. I told him to piss off, but he’s got all sorts of clearance I’ve never seen before in my life… what the hell did you do, Luke? What the bloody hell-….”

“Don’t worry Alfalfa,” I managed a joke, trying to calm the clearly frazzled man down. “I’ll be down to the Yard in a few. Tell me, did you get a name…?”

There was some interference from his end, like something muffling the microphone on the phone. I could still hear Alfie’s voice, faintly.

“He’s asking for a name,” he said.

A voice, quieter, too indistinct to make out, replied. Static again as Alfie held the phone back up to his ear; he hesitated there, breathing, thinking, panicking.

“He says he’s Hamish. Hamish Holmes…”

And then it was my turn to panic.


	18. Chapter 18

_“Ah, the infamous Hamish Holmes makes his debut.”_

_Lucifer smirked. “Yeah.”_

____________________________

Never before had my mind been racing so much as it was during the car ride to Scotland Yard that night in the spring. Phineas had offered his personal taxi to us, but I declined, hailing a cab for Charlie and I; the last thing I needed was Phineas bogging up my much-needed silence with whatever comments he’d have. I was feeling a profound many emotions—anger, anxiousness, excitement, dread—all combining to form the pit in my stomach. I turned on Charlie, as he had nowhere to run trapped beside me in the taxi.

“What do you know about Hamish Holmes?!” I snapped suddenly, breaking my prolonged silence.

Poor Charlie nearly had a heart attack, startled. “Jeez Luke…!!”

“Tell me!” I was half begging, half demanding.

“He’s an agent, a-a good one, that’s all I know, I swear!!”

“No! You’re lying! Tell me!” I began to interrogate him, using poking and tickling as my means of extracting information. Charlie squirmed frantically, smacking my hands away as fast as he could see them coming.

The taxi driver eyed us distastefully in the rear-view mirror. “Are you kids five or sumthin’?! Knock it off!”

The two of us sat perfectly still, hands folded in our laps like perfect angels. Once the driver stopped glaring, I let out an exaggerated sigh, leaning heavily into my hand and staring out the window.

“If I try to kill him, don’t stop me.” I grumbled.

“You’re not going to try and kill him, Luke,” Charlie rolled his eyes.

“Don’t underestimate me.”

Charlie and I arrived at Scotland Yard before Phineas. My card still worked to open the doors; Aflie must have never really booted me from the system, the old softie. The elevator zoomed us up to the floor I used to work on, dinging pleasantly as it opened its doors and revealed to us the scene that lay waiting. In the middle of the office, Alfie was talking with a figure who had their back to the elevators. As Charlie and I entered, he turned to face us. I remember the moment like it had just happened. This, this was Hamish Holmes. He was ginger, wavy red hair combed neatly to one side; is face was thin and sharp, eyes like a hawk’s glaring out from under low-set brows, ghostly pale skin dusted in light freckles. His clothes were black—black jeans, black t-shirt, black coat—all of them fitting poorly, jeans too baggy, shirt too tight. He gave of the air of a corpse, with his depressing wardrobe and complexion of a cadaver, though he had to have been younger than me. When he spoke, his voice was low, purposeful, no sense of warmth or comfort to be found.

“You’re here,” he stated matter-of-factly.

I stood my ground a few feet from him, Charlie at my side. “You’re Hamish Holmes?”

“I am.”

In the blink of an eye, I had two fistfuls of his coat and was slamming him up against the wall, anger blinding me to my own actions. This Hamish character was unfazed, breaking my hold on his coat with one swift movement, sending me staggering back with a powerful shove that seemed impossibly strong for one as thin as a rail.

“So you’re Lucifer Holmes,” he spoke evenly, tilting his head ever so slightly, a ghost of a smirk playing at his lips. “You’re that Albanian bitch’s son, aren’t you?”

A stab of fury ran hot through my chest, and I threw myself back at the ginger, tackling him to the floor, arm raising to punch down into his face. But a sudden pain rushed through me as the air whooshed sharply from my lungs; I blinked and I was on my back, Hamish leaning down into my view, patronizing.

“I’m impressed, Lucifer. Uncle Mycroft _said_ you’d be angry. I didn’t expect you to act on it. No, but that’s good. Better to take action that try to bury it all under formality.”

He offered me a hand. I looked at it a moment, knowing that if I wanted, I could use it to drag him back into the fight. But a cold reality had washed over me, quenching the fire of my uncontrollable anger. I took the hand, getting back to my feet with the help of the ginger.

“How do you know about my mother?” I asked in something of a growl as I brushed myself off.

“I know an _awful_ lot about you, Lucifer,” He sighed. “You’re the favorite, after all.”

“Favorite?” I frowned, eyeing him sharply.

“Yes, favorite. Favorite son.” He couldn’t help but smile at the look of confusion that stuck to my face. “Hamish _Holmes_ , Lucifer. Your brother.”

How obvious was it, I wonder? Holmes. Hamish Holmes. What else could he have been but my brother? Still, I was, simply put, shocked. Once my moment of stunned silence had its five seconds of fame, the questions began to tumble out of my mouth like verbal puke.

“Where’s my dad!? Did you work with him? And Sherlock? Is Sherlock still alive?! Hell, is dad still alive!? How long have you been in the Clandestine Syndicate-?”

“Shh! Watch what you say, Lucifer.” Hamish cut in harshly, jabbing his head towards Alfie.

I looked to the Detective Inspector, slowly realizing that he still had no clue. No clue about all of it. Of all the spies, and spies of spies, and so on and so forth. Alfie, by the looks of him, knew he was about to get in too deep for his own good.

“I’ll just… Holmes can you lock up behind yourself..?”

“Yes,” Hamish and I answered in unison, which ended in a tense bit of staring at one another.

“Right,” the discomfort was plain as day in Alfie’s voice as he backed towards the elevator, grabbing his coat off a desk as he did. “I’ll be going then… night all…”

“Best watch your step, Detective Inspector,” Phineas’ voice came smugly, dangerously, from where he had emerged from the elevator Alfie was attempting to back up into.

“Beg your pardon,” Alfie managed to sound at least a bit gracious despite the fear putting a stutter in his usually unshakable voice.

“Give the girlfriend my love, Alf!” I did my best to tease.

He managed a weak smile as he pressed the ground floor on the elevator panel. “Fat chance, Luke. Last time I did, she almost left me for the likes of you!”

The tension in the air was palpable, not only between Hamish and I, but now between Phineas as well, who dwelled at the edge of the office space, leaning casually against his umbrella like a cane. And, of course, poor Charlie—he stood off to the side, tense as a coiled spring, all his agent training screaming to be ready for when things went south. And in our case, _far_ south.

The door of the elevator shut, and everything began to happen instantly.

“Ah, if it isn’t the Clandestine Syndicate’s kamikaze.” Phineas sneered at Hamish.

“If it isn’t the Red Queen herself.” Hamish replied evenly, the effects of his words on Phineas clear, visibly angering the usually cool man.

“Need I remind you that you are under _my_ jurisdiction in London, agent?”

“What are you going to do? Off with my head?” The sneer, while not appearing on Hamish’s stern features, came across clearly in his tone. “Desperate to flex your muscles, are we, Solo-Six?”

“What does the codename come from, exactly?” I cut in, knowing a fight in the making when I saw one.

Phineas waved a disinterested, dismissive hand. “Just a silly nickname—”

“Solo-Six,” Hamish spoke over the overly-groomed agent. “Last of our MI6 division. Used to be Britain was a place of power plays, the key to many victories on a global scale. Now? Phineas sits in power more out of courtesy than necessity. Britain hasn’t been dealt into the game since Mycroft felt it was stable enough to step down.”

Phineas scoffed, though the nasty scowl on his face gave away his fury. “And how would you know the importance of my position, kamikaze? You’re just a glorified informant.”

“A glorified informant who knows the details of your assignment cover to cover, _monsieur_ Sinclair.” Hamish gave a slight, mocking bow. “And lack thereof.”

“If you’re the kamikaze, Mr. Hamish, sir,” Charlie spoke up a bit shyly. “Then glorified informant is severely misleading.”

“As it’s meant to be, agent,” Hamish nodded to my partner, regaining his sternness after the verbal spat with Phineas which he had clearly enjoyed _far_ too much.

“Kamikaze? Like the Japanese suicide soldiers?” I frowned intensely. “Are you here to kill us all then?”

“You misunderstand the nature of my distasteful nickname, Lucifer,” Hamish sighed a bit, more out of necessity than impatience. “It came round due to the inherent and excessive danger of my… particular role in the CS.”

“Glorified informant?” I teased half-heartedly, letting slip a smile.

Hamish sniffed in amusement, letting slip a smile of his own. “Quite. More like tackling the most dangerous—usually deemed suicidal—missions for the CS, particularly for Mycroft. Where other agents couldn’t possibly be risked, I am sent in to do my job or die trying.”

“Why would you want a job like that?” Charlie sounded mortified; I’m sure he thought our mission was dangerous enough, let alone what was considered ‘dangerous’ enough to assign to ‘the kamikaze.’

“He doesn’t,” Phineas cut in, seeing his opportunity to strike a crippling blow to his verbal adversary. “He’s dying as it is. So he’s the best fit for the role. He has nothing to lose.”

“Dying?” My eyebrows shot up in surprise—something they’d been doing a lot lately—turning to look upon my apparently-dying brother, who bowed his head.

“Yes dying,” Phineas allowed himself a victory smirk. “What is it exactly again, Ham? Some birth defect or something of the sort?”

“An autoimmune disease, Phinn. My body killing itself.” He looked to me, eyes dark and pained. “I _was_ going to tell you, for the record.”

“It’s best this way,” Phineas cut back in, sighing all importantly, eyeing his watch. “So poor Lucy doesn’t get attached to the brother living on borrowed time.”

 _Wham!!_ I threw the punch into his jaw before he had a moment to see it coming. Clenched fist stinging from the impact, I watched, my own jaw clenched up in anger, as Phineas’ hand reached carefully for the rapidly forming bruise along his jawline, rolling his jaw gingerly as the punch left his skull rattling and his mouth temporary silenced. Satisfied, I stalked back over to where Charlie stood in mortified shock; first I had attacked the most dangerous agent in the CS, and now I’ve gone and socked the most powerful man in Britain. I _had_ to be nuts, in his opinion.

Hamish looked at me all seriousness, but a hint of a smile breaking through. “You shouldn’t have done that, Lucifer.”

I shrugged. “Charlie can handle him if he gets it in his head to try something clever.”

“I can?” Charlie’s voice rose a couple octaves.

Without warning, I threw a punch at his face; his hand shot up and grabbed a hold of my fist before it could make contact, restraining my arm.

I winked. “Yeah, you can.”

Charlie sighed in defeat, letting my fist go and shifting his focus to Phineas, who sulked in silence off to the side of the room, nursing his freshly-dislocated-and-promptly-relocated jaw.

“Better get to the point, I suppose,” Hamish began stoically. “I’m to help the two of you on your mission with the WOLF agents. Word is the two of you aren’t getting very far on your own.”

“That’s not true!” Charlie frowned indignantly. “We were just with—“

My well-timed elbow to his ribs shut up right up. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve lost all our leads. Not that we had any to begin with.”

Hamish eyed me. “No leads, huh?”

I shrugged. “It’s hard to get leads when you hardly know the bare minimum of the case details.”

“Is that right?” Hamish huffed to himself, crossing his arms. “Who were you working with?”

“Bernadette.”

“Ah. That makes sense, then. Bet she told you who you were after and where to look, but not a peep more. Am I right?”

“Pretty much…”

“Well that’s Bernie for you. Trust issues galore. She’s just a _ball_ to work with.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What? And the agent with the most dangerous job in the world _doesn’t_ have trust issues?”

“Me?” Hamish sounded just a touch surprised. “No, not at all. I tend to offer my trust off the bat. Those with malicious intent mistake me a fool, and those with good intentions think me a friend. Swings things in my favor either way.”

He clapped his hands together suddenly. “But enough chit chat for now, _mes amis_. We can pick up these lovely conversational topics once we’re in the air.” He checked his wrist, as if there were a watch there. “Our ride should be here by now. I requested for her personally. You’re friend Ashley May, that is.”

My heart nearly leapt from my chest. “Ashley’s here? She’s our currier? How did you manage that? I thought curriers couldn’t be requested; they’re assigned by convenience and proximity, aren’t they?”

Hamish sighed. “The questions, Lucifer. We agreed to wait on those…”

“Sorry,” I mumbled a bit bitterly, nodding to Charlie and following Hamish to the elevator with my partner by my side.

Hamish paused on his way to the elevator to bow deeply, extravagantly, mockingly, to Phineas. “A pleasure, as always, _monsieur_ Sinclair.”

Phineas smiled; a deadly, murderous expression. “Quite so, agent.”

I half expected Phineas to throw a fist into my face as I passed by him and into the elevator—as did Charlie, by the way I saw him tense up in my peripheral—but the groomed man stood by, smiling easily, eyes like that of a hawks. The elevator doors shut, cutting Phineas off from us three, and leaving us all able to breathe easy.

“And to answer your questions, Lucifer,” Hamish smiled to himself, arms folded behind his back. “When you’re the agent tackling all the death-wish jobs, you’re never refused what you ask for. In this case, I asked for Ashley May, and I was given Ashley May.”

Sure enough, we left Scotland Yard to find a cab waiting for us outside. The window rolled down, and Ashley May’s sunny face greeted us.

“Someone call for a cab?”

Hamish looked awful serious. “I called for you, a cab, a private jet, two bottles of bourbon—the _good_ stuff—and a laptop with the timeless classic _Beauty and Beast_ saved on it.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, carrot-top,” Ashley teased. “You’re other stuff’s on the jet.”

Hamish turned to me, a smug smile on his face. “Like I said… never refused.”

I couldn’t help but grin. And as we drove to the airport, Charlie and Ashley May bantering like brother and sister, her teasing the hell out of me as I did my best to outdo her harmless insults, I felt a certain peace I hadn’t felt since joining the CS. For once, I couldn’t see _anything_ going wrong. Charlie and I were now working with Hamish Holmes, my brother, and also the most badass agent the CS could boast of. Ashley May made our little group of coworkers feel like a family; something I hadn’t felt with anyone for a very long time. Honestly, I never saw it coming: the storm of utter hell that was already gathering over our heads even as we laughed and continued on oblivious to its presence. And it was about to open up and rain fire on us all.


End file.
